Three Language Learning Hacks
1. Be present When learning any language, it is helpful to not think too far ahead. When you focus on how many words there are yet to learn, it can be overwhelming and lead to less progress. On the other hand, remind yourself often of how far you have come. Perhaps...
Is Handsonturkish.com a genuine website?
Recently, we received an email from a customer who had searched on the internet to see if our language courses had been recommended by other users. He found a comment which claimed that our language site was not genuine. This unsettled him and he contacted us...
The World’s biggest Airport opens – New Istanbul Airport
All scheduled commercial passenger flights were transferred from Istanbul Atatürk Airport to Istanbul Airport on 6 April 2019, The Iairport code IST was also transferred to the new airportY More facts are in the video below. Enjoy....
Passive, Causative, Reciprocal and Reflexive Verbs in Turkish
Turkish has a fairly neat system for altering verbs to make them passive, causative, reciprocal, or reflexive, by adding an element between the verb stem and the tense. All the elements in this section obey the rules of vowel and consonant harmony. Passive verbs are...
Reflections on Becoming Bilingual
It has become common knowledge that knowing more than one language is good for the brain. It improves mental flexibility and makes it easier to switch between tasks. I recently attended a fascinating talk on bilingualism which was part of the University of Edinburgh’s...
Verbal Adjectives in Turkish
Usually verbal adjectives, just like normal adjectives in Turkish, modify a “headword” – which is usually the noun that comes after it. Normal adjective: Tatlı kız – sweet girl Verbal adjective: Tatlı olan kız. – The girl who is sweet. Verbal adjective: Evleneceğim...
Turkish Etiquette – Do’s and Don’ts in Turkey
Paying separately in the restaurant - uncommon. Wanting to pay separately when you go to a restaurant could be interpreted that you want nothing to do with the people around you. It is, therefore, common in Turkey that everyone pays the quoted price together. The...
Visiting a Turkish Hammam
Turkish baths: places for socialising, relaxing and purifying body and soul Turkish baths, called hammams (Turkish: hamam), became popular in Turkey in the 7th century and are an export of the Roman Empire. They were places of cleanliness, for purifying body and soul....
Verbal nouns in Turkish
In the dictionary, all verbs in Turkish end with the stem -mek or -mak, according to vowel harmony. 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...
The Present Tense in Turkish
There are two main present tenses in Turkish: -iyor and -er/ir. -İyor is a present continuous tense, like “is doing”. The -İ changes according to vowel harmony but the o never changes, so all additional vowels added onto -iyor harmonise on that basis. Okuyor. –...
Surprising facts about Turkish Delight
What is Turkish Delight? Turkish delight or lokum is a family of confections They consist of small, fragrant cubes of jelly, traditionally flavoured with rosewater, orange flower water or lemon juice and dusted with icing sugar. Premium varieties consist largely of...
Expressing ability and inability in Turkish
To change a verb to indicate ability or inability, add -ebil or -eme respectively before the tense ending. The -i in -ebil does not change in accordance with vowel harmony, so all additional elements harmonise on -i. However, -eme can become -ama in accordance with...
Three Language Learning Hacks
Learning a language is one of the most fascinating endeavours you can undertake, enabling you to delve into the intricacies of human communication and allowing you to interact with far-off peoples and cultures. However, let’s face it, this can also be a most...
Expressing possession in Turkish (Part 2)
Please make sure you have read Part 1 of Expressing possession in Turkish. A different form of expressing possession in Turkish comes when a noun is used to modify another noun. In that case, the third person possessive marker on the first noun is dropped, but the...
Expressing possession in Turkish (Part 1)
Possession in English is dealt with in two ways: you can say “the Queen of England” or “England’s Queen”. In Turkish, both these would be translated in the same way: “İngiltere’nin kraliçesi”. Unlike in the English “England’s Queen”, where only the person or thing...
Which past tense to use in Turkish? -miş versus -di
The main division between past tenses in English is according to when the events happened in relation to the frame of discussion. In Turkish, however, the main division between the past tenses is according to the relationship of the teller to the information provided....
Turkish Language – distinction between the suffix -ki and the word ki
Something that even native Turkish speakers confuse is the distinction between the suffix -ki and the word ki. Both are important and useful parts of the language, and so it is worth going over their meanings. The suffix -ki is almost exclusively used after the suffix...
Turkish Language: Consonant Harmony
There are two types of consonant harmony in the Turkish language. 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...
