LESSON NOTES

All About #3
Painless Turkish Grammar

CONTENTS
2

Grammar

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GRAMMAR
The Focus of this Lesson is Turkish Grammar

Turkish is an agglutinative language in which the functions of words in sentences are

determined with the suffixes added to their endings. Because there are so many Turkish
suffixes, the roots of words remain unchanged, regardless of their verb tenses or/and while
constructing new meanings.
Verbs
Turkish has five basic verb tenses which are constructed through suffixes that attach to verbs
directly: Simple present, future, present continuous, definite past and indefinite past. Many
functional combinations are possible because of the need for continuity of the action and of
clarity if the speaker has witnessed the action or not. Modal verbs appear in the form of
suffixes as well, which are combinable with temporal tenses.
Word Order
Turkish is a highly flexible language, including word order in the sentences. Changing the
placement of the words (without altering their suffixes) is grammatically acceptable and it
provides differing levels of emphasis.
To illustrate how it works compared to English, let's break down the sentence Ben okula
gidiyorum. which means "I am going to the school." into its major components:
"I": ben (subject)
"am going": gidiyorum (verb)
"to the school": okula (object)
And now let's see Ben, okula and gidiyorum, which are subject, object and verb respectively,
for the combinations one can make and how they differ from each other:
Ben okula gidiyorum. = "I am going to the school."
Ben gidiyorum okula. = "I am going to the school."
Okula ben gidiyorum. = "I am going to the school."

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ALL ABOUT #3 - PAINLESS TURKISH GRAMMAR

Okula gidiyorum ben. = "I am going to the school."

Gidiyorum ben okula. = "I am going to the school."
Gidiyorum okula ben. = "I am going to the school."
Forming Questions
Making an interrogative sentence is again one of the many functions of the Turkish suffix. It
can be put right after the word which is about to be responded to. Yet, the interrogative suffix
is not used when there is an interrogative word present in the sentence like; "Who," "Where,"
"How" etc. How the placement of the question suffix changes the part the question is being
aksed about can be seen easily:
Yarn: "tomorrow"
Yamurlu: "rainy"
mu/m: Question suffix
Yarn stanbul yamurlu mu? = "Is it rainy in Istanbul tomorrow?"
Yarn m stanbul yamurlu? = "Is it rainy in Istanbul tomorrow?"
Yarn stanbul mu yamurlu? = "Is it rainy in Istanbul tomorrow?"
Pronouns
There are three single and three plural personal pronouns in Turkish. The first, second, and
third single and plural personal pronouns are duplicates of each other. Possessive pronouns
are derived directly from personal pronouns, with the possessive suffixes attached to their
endings. Interestingly enough, personal pronouns are in accordance with descriptive,
demonstrative and location adjectives. Moreover, the personal pronouns in Turkish directly
receive the postpositions when they are used as objects, in the accusative and dative forms.
Articles
In languages like Italian, French or German articles change according to the accusative and
dative forms, genders, plurality, and even prepositions. Yet in Turkish, articles do not exist, but
there's a similar concept which appears only for the case of possessives, in the form of
suffixes.

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ALL ABOUT #3 - PAINLESS TURKISH GRAMMAR

Sentence-Ending Particles
One of the functional and nice aspects of the Turkish language is the sentence-ending
particles that add diverse stresses and emphases, and reflect the speaker's emotions. Most of
them are avoided in formal conversations though, as Turkish people do not like attracting
attention to things they say or how they feel, so their usage is rather seen in colloquial
dialogues. Some of them can even be accepted as slang. But for example between lovers,
parent and child or young friends, they sound cute and show the closeness of the
relationship.
Dialect Variations
Throughout the country are found hundreds of dialects, and so the pronunciations of the verb
suffixes may differ according to the region, by talking at a fast pace or by not pronouncing
some letters. However, these variations only exist in spoken language. Dialect alterations are
not reflected in the written language.

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ALL ABOUT #3 - PAINLESS TURKISH GRAMMAR