Passive verbs are generally formed by the addition of -il (for verb stems ending in consonants) or -n (for verb stems ending in vowels), and less often by -l, -in, or -len in making a noun into a verb:

Ayşe kötü yaptı – Ayşe did it badly

Kötü yapıldı – It was done badly

Kimliğini öğrendim – I learnt his/her identity

Kimliği öğrenildi – His/her identity was learnt

Cenk evi temizledi – Cenk cleaned the house

Ev temizlendi – The house was cleaned

Reflexive sentences also have -in or -n (and much less often -l or -il) added to the verb. These are different to the passives, and you will come to recognise them over time. They are also, unlike passive verbs, able to take a subject:

Soyundum – I have taken my clothes off.

Uyandın – You woke (yourself) up

Abdullah yıkandı – Abdullah washed himself

Çok sevindim – I pleased (myself) very much (meaning “I became very pleased”)

Kız süslendi – The girl decorated herself (meaning “the girl dressed up”)

Causatives are marked by -r, -t, -ir or -tir/-dir (according to consonant harmony):

Yattım – I lay down

Yatırdım – I lay someone else down or I put down/invested some money

Musa öldü – Musa died

Harun Musa’yı öldürdü – Harun murdered Musa

Harun Defne’ye Musa’yı öldürttü – Harun had Defne murder Musa (double causative)

Yapıyorum – I am doing (it).

Yaptırıyorum – I am having it done (by someone else).

Ararım – I will look (for it)

Aratırım – I will have it searched for (by someone else).

Saçını mı kestirdin? – Did you have your hair cut (by someone else)?

Reciprocal elements are used when two things are acting on one another rather than a single subject acting on an object. They are -ş or -iş, or occasionally -leş in making a noun into a verb:

Sevmek – To like/love/caress

Sevişmek – To make love together

Bakmak – To look

Bakışmak – To exchange glances

Telefon ettim – I telephoned (him/her)

Telefonlaştık – We talked on the telephone

You can often include causative, passive, reflexive, and reciprocal elements together:

Musa öldürüldü – Musa was murdered (to die + causative + passive)

Uyuşturuldum – I was anaesthetised (to sleep + reciprocal + causative + passive)

Kabullendireceğim – I will make (him/her/them) accept (it) (acceptance + passive verb + causative)

Tartışıldı – It was debated (to weigh + reflexive + passive)

The post Passive, Causative, Reciprocal and Reflexive Verbs in Turkish appeared first on HandsOnTurkish.

Normal adjective: Tatlı kız – sweet girl

Verbal adjective: Tatlı olan kız. – The girl who is sweet.

Verbal adjective: Evleneceğim kız. – The girl whom I am going to marry.

However, if there is no headword, a headword is implied and must be deduced from context:

En tatlı olan kazansın. – May the sweetest one (girl? cake?) win.

Verbal adjectives are an extremely important way in which sentences are made more complex in Turkish:

Spor salonuna gitmeyen adam yaptıklarımı bilmez zaten. – A man who does not go to the gym would not know the things I am doing, anyhow.

Orta Anadolu’nun her yerinde şanlı bir tarihe sahip olan Hititlere ait pek bilinmeyen şehirler var. – There are cities that are not well known belonging to the Hittites, who have/had a glorious history, everywhere in central Anatolia.

Past or present verbal adjectives without a possessive ending are of the form -an or -en according to vowel harmony (with a -y- added in-between for verb stems ending in a vowel):

Halı satan kadın bize de çay ikram etti. – The woman selling rugs also gave us tea.

“Hayır!” diyen yoktu. – No-one said “No!” (lit. there was no (person) who said “No!”)

Past or present verbal adjectives with a possessive ending are of the form -tik, -tık, -tük, or –tuk (according to vowel harmony, and it can also start with a “d” instead of a “t” according to consonant harmony):

Yüzdüğüm havuzlar – Pools I have swum (in)

Yaptığını beğenmedim. – I didn’t like what you did.

In the future tense, verbal adjectives take –ecek and usually a possessive ending:

Yüzeceğim havuzlar – Pools I will swim (in)

Yapacağı çok şey var. – He has a lot of things to do.

Yapacak çok şey var. – There are a lot of things to do.

There are also, more rarely, verbal adjectives in other tenses –

-miş: geçmiş zaman – past tense (lit. the time that has passed); söylenmemiş söz – a word that was not spoken.

-r/-er/-ar (“wide” present): anlaşılır bir şekilde konuş. – speak in a way that is understood; inanılmaz bir tatildi – it was an unbelievable (lit. that could not be believed) holiday.

Just as with verbal nouns, there are lots of ways in which verbal adjectives are used creatively in Turkish:

Yaptıktan sonra. – After it is done.

Spor yapmadığım halde sağlıklıyım. – I am healthy despite not doing sport.

Anlamadığı için cevap vermiyor. – He does not answer because he does not understand.

Verbal adjectives may well be the most difficult grammatical feature in Turkish, but once you get used to them, they will be the key to unlock more difficult sentences. Enjoy!

The post Verbal Adjectives in Turkish appeared first on HandsOnTurkish.

To make a verbal noun out of a verb, we usually take off the –mek or –mak, and add –me or –ma – in effect merely removing the k at the end.

So yüzmek is to swim, but yüzme is swimming. You can use it as part of a noun phrase – yüzme havuzu is swimming pool – or as a noun on its own, as with swimming as part of a list of sports.

Where this becomes interesting is that Turkish uses verbal nouns (with or without possessives) in a variety of creative ways:

Yüzmem lazım – I must swim

Yüzmesi gerek – He or she has to swim

Yüzme nedeniyle – As a result of swimming…

Yüzmeden önce – Before swimming…

For the negative, put a -me or -ma before the -me or -ma:

Konuşmama hakkına sahipsin – You have the right to remain silent (lit. You have a right to not talking)

Eve getirilmemesi daha iyi olurdu – It would be better if he or she didn’t bring it home

Another type of verbal noun is the –mek or –mak you find in your dictionary, which usually translates as “to do something”:

Yüzmek – to swim

Yüzmek yasak – Swimming is banned

Hata yapmak insani, affetmek ilahidir – To err is human, to forgive divine

Finally, there is also the –iş form of verbal noun in Turkish, which is a noun describing the way an action is done:

Yüzüşü değişik – The way she swims is different

Bana bakışından anladım – I understood from the way he looked at me

The post Verbal nouns in Turkish appeared first on HandsOnTurkish.

Unlike in the English “England’s Queen”, where only the person or thing doing the possessing is marked (with ‘s), in Turkish both the possessor and the possessed are marked.

Thus, İngiltere (England)+‘nin (‘s) kraliçe (Queen) + si (possession marker).

And if we are already talking about England, we can drop it:

Kraliçesi (its Queen)

Other possessive markers

There are other possessive markers for other persons – and all possessive markers follow vowel harmony. See our other articles on vowel harmony.

As the usual meaning of köpekleri is “his/her/their dogs”, there is a general preference towards using köpeği when there are multiple owners except in situations where the singular nature of the possessed dog is already established.

The post Expressing possession in Turkish (Part 1) appeared first on HandsOnTurkish.

For the first, you should remember the phrase fıstıkçı Şahap, which literally means Şahap the nut-seller. This apparent nonsense is useful because it contains all the “hard” consonants in Turkish:

f   s   t   k   ç   ş   h   p

If you add a suffix beginning with a c or a d to a word ending in one of these hard consonants, then the c changes to a ç and the d to a t.

For instance:

Soft: İngiliz (English [as an adjective]) –> İngilizce (English [the language])

Hard: Türk (Turkish [as an adjective]) –> Türkçe (Turkish [the language])

Soft: Bakkal (corner shop) –> Bakkalda (at the corner shop)

Hard: Park (park) –> Parkta (at the park)

The second is the result of a feeling that words should not end with certain letters, and so consequently words which would ordinarily end with those letters get modified.

However, if you add a vowel onto the end of them, they revert to their original form.

The letters that Turkish avoids ending words with are c (which has a j sound in Turkish), d, b, and ğ.

c becomes ç, d becomes t, b becomes p, and ğ becomes k at the end of words.

So ağaç (tree) becomes ağaca (to the tree) when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added.

Arap (Arab) becomes Arab’ın (the Arab’s).

Dert (problem) becomes derdimiz (our problem).

And terlik (slipper) becomes terliği (his/her slipper).

However, if a suffix beginning with a consonant is added, the word remains in its modified form.

e.g. terlikleri (his/her slippers)

Note – this does not mean that all words ending in these letters have been modified. For example, the word et (meat) becomes etim (my meat) and not edim, because its original form was et. The unmodified words ending in these letters are often single syllable, but this is not a rule.

This form of consonant harmony should soon become second nature, but until it is, the Turkish dictionary should helpfully have whether the words change in brackets after them, e.g. et (-ti) but Arap (-bı).

The post Turkish Language: Consonant Harmony appeared first on HandsOnTurkish.

To put it all together, we can use a string of suffixes long beloved of Turkish teachers and a tongue-twister it is worth memorising to keep your vowel harmony game strong:

Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısınız?

Which means, “Are you one of those people whom we were unable to make into Czechoslovakians?”

Clearly the effort in general was a failure, since Czechoslovakia is no longer with us, but let us break down the word itself to show vowel harmony in action:

Çekoslovakya – Czechoslovakia

+lı – short vowel harmony: the li/lı/lü/lu suffix signifies that they are “from” a place, in this  case Czechoslovakia

+laş – long vowel harmony: the -laş-/-leş- component is used to make a noun into a verb of transformation – so in this case it means “becoming Czechoslovakians”

+tır – short vowel harmony: the -tir-/-tır-/-tur-/-tür- component is the causative – “to cause to become Czechoslovakians”

+ama – two lots of long vowel harmony (!). The -ama-/-eme- component indicates an inability, so “to be unable to cause to become Czechoslovakians”.

+dıklarımız – short, long and two short. The “-dik/-dık/-dük/-duk” makes a verb into a clause, the “-lar/-ler” is the plural form and the “-imiz/-ımız/-ümüz/-umuz” is the first person plural possessive (our). So “those (lar) whom (dık) we (ımız) were unable to cause to become Czechoslovakians”.

+dan – long vowel harmony. -dan/-den is “from”, “part of” or “among”. So “Among those whom we were unable to cause to become Czechoslovakians”.

mı – short vowel harmony. Although usually vowel harmony only applies to suffixes, there are two prominent exceptions: the yes/no question word (mi/mı/mü/mu) and a word meaning “also” (da/de as a separate word). “Is he/she/it among those whom we were unable to cause to become Czechoslovakians?”.

+sınız – two lots of short vowel harmony. Finally, this is the second person plural (or formal) “to be”, making the whole sentence “Are you among those whom we were unable to cause to become Czechoslovakians?” or, “Are you one of those people whom we were unable to make into Czechoslovakians?”

No-one is expecting you to be able to pronounce – or instinctively comprehend – this whole word right now, but if you try pronouncing it, you will see how much easier it is to say with all the vowels in the same corner of your mouth.

In contrast, if we wanted to ask if we had failed to make you into a Swede, the vowel harmony would follow other lines throughout:

İsveçlileştiremediklerimizden misiniz?

There are a couple of exceptions to these general rules:

• A few suffixes have vowels in them that do not harmonise, and in this case you continue harmonising after that vowel in accordance with what the non-harmonising vowel is.
• If there is a foreign word pronounced differently to how it is spelt, you harmonise according to the pronunciation, not the spelling: e.g. the Arabic-derived word saat, meaning clock or time, is pronounced somewhere closer to sa-et, and suffixes harmonise on “e”. The French-derived liberal also harmonises on “e”, while a muggle from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter harmonises on “ı” (being pronounced approximately “mug-ıl”).

The post Turkish language: Vowel harmony (Part 2) appeared first on HandsOnTurkish.

In order to provide additional help to new learners of Turkish, Hands on Turkish is publishing a series of articles focusing on particular sticking-points in the grammar that often confuse learners whose first language is not Turkic. These are not intended to teach you these concepts from scratch – check out the Hands on Turkish course for that – but to be a handy reference guide for any difficulties later on.

This blog article focuses on vowel harmony, which is often seen as a very difficult problem for new learners. However, with a little practice, it will soon become second nature.

There are two main concepts to grasp in this blog post:

1. Long vowel harmony (e or a)
2. Short vowel harmony (i, ı, ü, or u)

Both forms of vowel harmony work to make words easier to pronounce and less of a mouthful. As you come to use Turkish more often, you will increasingly find that you can tell when another speaker has got it “right”.

With long vowel harmony, suffixes on a word take either the letter “e” or the letter “a”.

This happens with nouns, for example when you are specifying something’s location with the suffix -da/-de –

And with verbs, for example with the future tense (-acak/ecek)

Whether something takes an “a” or an “e” depends on the last vowel in the word before you add the ending.

a, ı, u, and o take an “a” where the suffix uses long vowel harmony

e, i, ü, and ö take an “e” where the suffix uses long vowel harmony

Short vowel harmony works in much the same way, but with four possible options: i, ı, ü and u.

For example, the simple past tense (-di/dı/dü/du) works like this:

Once again, it is the same with nouns, as we can see with the possessive “my” (-im/ım/üm/um, or just -m after vowels):

Whether something takes an “i”, “ı”, “ü” or “u” depends again on the last vowel in the word before you add the ending.

e and i take an “i” where the suffix uses short vowel harmony

a and ı take an “ı” where the suffix uses short vowel harmony

ö and ü take a “ü” where the suffix uses short vowel harmony

o and u take a “u” where the suffix uses short vowel harmony

The post Turkish language: Vowel harmony (Part 1) appeared first on HandsOnTurkish.