An Introduction to Turkish Grammar and What Makes it Different

Are you thinking of learning Turkish? Then Turkish grammar is likely to be one of the more challenging aspects of it. (Turkish reading/writing and phonology is relatively easy, and vocabulary is just a matter of memorisation.)

Because most textbooks tend to give a huge overview of everything, I thought I’d give the “language learner’s perspective” of the main features of the Turkish grammar.

So consider this to be an introduction to Turkish grammar and what makes it different from other languages that you might know or have studied.

For an English speaker, Turkish grammar takes some getting used to. The suffix patterns are systematic, but the word order and ways of building sentences can feel unfamiliar.

But there are some unique features of Turkish grammar that are worth looking at in detail.

Turkish Grammar Overview

Below are a few features of Turkish grammar that are noteworthy for language learners.

Yes, these features are shared by other languages, but I’m sure many language learners who have focused on the world’s main European, Asian, Middle-Eastern, and African languages would find some of these new.

The main interesting features of Turkish grammar are:

• Word order, which is subject-object-verb. “Like Yoda, speak they do”
• Present-tense “to be” is often expressed through endings, or left unspoken in the third person
• Agglutination, or “Sticking words together with other bits to give them meaning”
• Cases, or “Particles at the ends of words to indicate their role in a sentence”
• Harmonisation, or “You modify the suffixes and sometimes parts of the words to make the whole word sound nicer”

We’ll look at all of these in turn below.

Plus, we’ll also consider a few aspects of Turkish grammar that aren’t difficult! These include

• The lack of grammatical gender
• Mostly regular suffix patterns, with some common exceptions
• The simplicity of plural forms
• The ease of negation

Count your blessings, after all.

Word Order in Turkish (SOV)

Turkish sentences are arranged in a different order from English and most European languages. Word order is the first obstacle if you’re not used to subject-object-verb (SOV) word order in sentences.

For some people, though, subject-object-verb (SOV) verb order is intuitive — especially if you speak a language that has it, like Japanese, Korean, Persian, or Hindi/Urdu.

You might like this other article: How hard is Korean for English Speakers?

In English, and most European languages and Chinese (plus many others, but those are the main ones), sentences are subject-verb-object (SVO). So for many others who haven’t dabbled much in Asian languages, SOV is confusing.

Here is how SVO works in English:

• I (subject) ate (verb) your gummy bears (object).
• What?? Those (subject) were (verb) chewable sedatives! (subject complement)
• Great. I (subject) am calling (verb) the hospital (object).

Of course, there are many other sentence structures in English and in other languages. But in English you can’t say “The force, use, you must!”, unless you’re trying to force sounding like Yoda. (And was he even speaking English, or was there some magic translation going on? Not sure.)

In Turkish, however, you use subject-object-verb. See below for some examples.

English	Turkish
I’m looking for a small watermelon.	Ben (“I”, subject) küçük bir karpuz (“a small watermelon”, object) arıyorum (“am looking for, verb”)
These watermelons are here.	Burada (“here”) bu karpuzlar (“these watermelons”, subject) var (“there are”).
But those are huge!	Ama onlar (“those”, subject) dev (“huge”, adjective)!
Use the force!	Gücü (“the force”, object) kullan (“use”)!

There is flexibility in word order in Turkish. Because Turkish uses a case system to show what’s a subject and what’s an object, you can move words around for emphasis and focus.

Questions don’t require English-style word-order inversion: the question particle usually marks them. Adverbial phrases can move too, though evde çalışıyorum, “I’m working at home”, already has the verb at the end.

“Those are huge!” is an adjectival sentence, not an example with an object and a lexical verb. It also leaves “are” unspoken. Let’s look at that next.

How Turkish Expresses “To Be”

Turkish doesn’t usually use a separate present-tense word for “is” in a simple description. Dondurma çok tatlı means “The ice cream is very sweet”: literally, “ice cream very sweet”.

But “to be” hasn’t disappeared. Turkish uses copular endings with nouns and adjectives: Öğrenciyim, “I am a student”; Hastasın, “You are ill”. In ordinary third-person present statements, the ending is often absent: O hasta, “He/she is ill”.

For the past, these predicates take -(y)dı/di/du/dü, with t instead of d after voiceless consonants: Hastaydı, “He/she was ill”; Gençti, “He/she was young”. For the future, use olmak: Öğrenci olacağım, “I will be a student”. Olmak also means “to become”.

Var and yok express existence or absence: Su var, “There is water”; Su yok, “There is no water”. Possession can use the same pattern: Arabam var, “I have a car”, literally “My car exists”.

So the practical difference is that Turkish often puts English “am/are/is” into an ending, or leaves it unspoken. The TRmorph grammar documentation gives examples of these present and past copular endings.

Vowel Harmony

Before going too far, you have to know that “vowel harmony” exists in Turkish grammar (it’s not just a spoken thing)

Vowel harmony sounds complicated and unfamiliar at first. But it’s quite intuitive, and it’s a short set of rules. Once you’ve looked at agglutination and verb conjugation, knowing that the rules are set by vowel harmony greatly reduces the number of things you need to know.

Vowel harmony is a somewhat unique feature of the way in which Turkish is written and spoken. You harmonize the vowels of words and their suffixes. This makes the language sound more fluid and harmonious.

Vowel harmony mostly applies to the suffixes in Turkish. Suffixes are used to describe the relationships of words (cases), and to conjugate verbs.

For a harmonising suffix, the last preceding vowel determines whether the suffix vowel is front or back. Four-way suffixes also match whether that preceding vowel is rounded; two-way suffixes use a or e.

There are two primary types of vowel harmony in Turkish: “2-way” (a.k.a. e-type, or “simple”) and “4-way” (or i-type, or “compound”).

It’s a topic worthy of its own post. But essentially, you use vowel harmony when choosing how to spell the suffix you’re going to add to a word.

Consider the simple example of vowel harmony in Turkish grammar for plural forms, a 2-way harmony. To make a plural, you add “lar” or “ler” to the end of a word. To figure out whether to use lar or ler, you do so based on the last vowel of a noun.

For example, the plural of ev, “house”, is evler. The plural of nar, “pomegranate”, is narlar. (There are some simple and predictable rules for the other possible vowels.)

An example of four-way harmony is the accusative suffix -(y)ı/i/u/ü, used for specific direct objects. Its vowel normally follows the last preceding vowel; the buffer y appears after a vowel.

For example, “milk” is süt. To say “I drank the milk”, you say sütü içtim, adding the “ü” to indicate it’s the object. But for “coffee”, which is kahve, you say kahveyi içtim, adding the “i” instead.

The rules for 4-way harmony are intuitive and come naturally with a bit of practise to see how they correspond with how you naturally speak.

Some borrowed roots, such as televizyon, contain vowels from different harmony groups. Their suffixes normally follow the last vowel. Other exceptions include fixed-vowel suffixes and some loanwords that take front-vowel suffixes despite their last vowel. Yoğurt is a Turkish word that follows harmony, not an example of a disharmonious loanword.

See here for a complete guide to Turkish vowel harmony — explained simply.

Consonant Harmony / Softening

See more about Turkish consonant harmony here.

Two related patterns are often discussed together: a suffix’s initial consonant can change, or a stem’s final consonant can change before a suffix.

After the voiceless consonants ç, f, h, k, p, s, ş and t, suffix-initial d becomes t and c becomes ç: kitapta, “in the book”; çiçekçi, “florist”. This doesn’t soften the stem’s final consonant.

Separately, many stems ending in p, ç, t or k change to b, c, d or ğ/g before a vowel-initial suffix: kitabı, ağacı, ayağı, rengi. This is stem softening, and it has exceptions.

For example, “book” is kitap in Turkish. The object marker is “ı”, a vowel, for this word. But to say “I read the book”, you say kitabı okudum, substituting the “p” for a “b” to soften it.

Similarly, “tree” is ağaç. “On the tree” is ağacın üzerinde: ç becomes c before the genitive suffix -ın.

Many monosyllabic words and some borrowed or multisyllabic words keep their final consonant: atı, hukuku, bulutu. Proper names retain their written form, with an apostrophe before an inflectional suffix: Ahmet’i. The TDK spelling guide lists the patterns and exceptions.

Agglutination, or “Stickingtogetherness”

Turkish is an “agglutinative” language.

I am not a fan of complicated grammar words, but you hear this one a lot, so it’s worth knowing. Agglutination means “Sticking things together”. Think of something that’s glutinous, like glutinous sticky rice. Mmm…

Turkish grammar uses agglutination to:

• Express relationships: For example, sandwich is sandviç. But “my sandwich” is sandviçim, “your sandwich” is sandviçin, etc.
• Indicate tense: The verb for “to eat” is yemek. “I ate” is yedim, “I am eating” is yiyorum, “I will eat” is yiyeceğim.
• Indicate person of a verb: The verb “to want” is İstemek. To say “I want, you want, he/she wants, we want” you’d say istiyorum, istiyorsun, istiyor, istiyoruz. Pronouns aren’t needed other than for emphasis.
• Describe case of a noun: Turkish uses a case system (more below) to describe a word’s role in a sentence. E.g. “city” is şehir. But to say you live “in the city” you say şehirde. And to say you like the city (as an object) you say şehri.
• Express negation: You add a negative suffix to a verb. E.g. I like it / I don’t like it” is seviyorum / sevmiyorum. “I ate it / I didn’t eat it” is yedim / yemedim.

The basic verbal negative suffix is -ma/-me. Before the progressive -yor, its vowel narrows to ı/i/u/ü: yapmıyorum, gelmiyorum, konuşmuyorum. Turkish Textbook explains this pattern.

They can be combined, too, of course, e.g. expressing a negative thing in the past tense for another person.

Other suffixes build new words too: göz, “eye”, becomes gözlük, “glasses”. Compounding — combining whole words — is a separate process.

Conjugation in Turkish grammar — A Further Word

(Get it, a further word…)

Turkish grammar has conjugation. It works through agglutination (see above). You assemble forms by adding suffixes to verb stems.

Turkish conjugation is less straightforward than English, which barely has any. But the nice part is that there are very few exceptions (just a short list of common verbs), and it otherwise behaves very predictably.

Turkish marks tense, aspect, mood and person through suffixes. Its system doesn’t map neatly onto English or European tense lists; learning a few common forms is more helpful than ranking the total number of tenses.

Turkish verbs conjugate for six “persons”: I, you, he/she/it, we, you plural, and they. The “you plural” conjugation is the same as the “you formal” conjugation, just like in French (vous) and Persian (شما).

For each person, there’s an ending. We’ll get to that in a second.

A useful starting pattern for many simple verb forms is:

verb root + [negative?] + tense/aspect/mood suffix + person ending

The verb root is well known. You get a verb’s infinitive, like yemek (to eat) or anlamak (“to understand”), and remove the -mek or -mak at the end. In some cases, there might be a slight variation for some tenses.

After the stem, add -ma/-me if the verb is negative. Before -yor, the vowel narrows: konuşuyorum, “I’m speaking”, becomes konuşmuyorum, “I’m not speaking”.

After negation, add the tense, aspect or mood suffix. Beginners usually meet the progressive -yor, the aorist, the past -dı/di/du/dü and the future -acak/-ecek early. Turkish also has an indirect/evidential past -mış/-miş/-muş/-müş and combinations of these forms.

For each of these tenses, you take the relevant particle and put it next to the verb. For example, the verb “to speak / talk”, konuşmak, has the stem konuş. To say “I speak, I will speak, I am speaking, I spoke”, you say konuşurum, konuşacağım, konuşuyorum, konuştum.

There are some rules about consonant and vowel agreement (see the above section), but they’re simple rules.

There are a few irregular verbs worth knowing whose stems change slightly. A few of these are gitmek (“to go/leave”), etmek (“to do”), yemek (“to eat”), and demek (“to say”).

One final thing: learn which case a verb requires for its complement. Specific direct objects normally take the accusative, as in Elmayı yedim, “I ate the apple”. Other verbs use the dative (Sana bakıyorum, “I’m looking at you”) or ablative (Köpekten korkuyorum, “I’m afraid of the dog”). Cases belong to the nouns or pronouns, not to the verbs themselves.

What’s a case? Good question…

Cases (The Role of Words in Sentences)

For anyone who has studied Russian, German, or Latin, “cases” may strike a chord of fear in your hearts.

But don’t worry! Cases in Turkish grammar are actually way easier than other languages with cases for a few reasons: There’s no grammatical gender, there are few exceptions, and there is a lack of (also exception-filled) declension tables.

Cases are best described as being indicators or flags to say what role a word is playing in a sentence.

If you speak Korean or Japanese, you might be familiar with particles that play similar roles, denoting object or subject.

Side note for Korean speakers: For example, in Korean, to say “I ate the rice”, you say 밥을 먹었다 (bab-eul meog-eossda) placing 밥 as the object, but to say “The rice is delicious”, you say 밥이 맛있다 (bab-i mas-issda), placing 밥 as the subject.

And for Japanese speakers: To say “I ate the rice”, you say ご飯を食べた (gohan o tabeta) placing ご飯 (gohan) as the object, but to say “The rice is delicious”, you say ご飯はおいしい (gohan wa oishii), marking ご飯 (gohan) as the topic. Here, は is a topic marker; が is the usual subject marker.

Let’s look at the word “table” in Turkish, which is masa.

English	Role of “table”	Turkish
This table is dirty.	Subject (Nominative case)	Bu masa kirli. (No changes)
Can you see the table?	Object (Accusative case)	Masayı görebiliyor musun?
The top of the table is clean.	Possessive / Relationship (Genitive case)	Masanın üzeri temiz.
I put a book on the table.	To / Towards / On (Dative case)	Masaya bir kitap koydum.
She’s already at the table.	At / in / with (Locative case)	O zaten masada.
I brought the food from the table.	From (Ablative case)	Masadan yemeği getirdim.
I wrote it with a pen.	With (Instrumental case)	Kalemle yazdım.

In each of those examples, the role of the word “table” is different. (In the last one, I used “pen”, as there was no good way to use “table”.)

Because Turkish uses suffixes to indicate the role of a word, there is actually some flexibility in word order in Turkish.

Turkish Grammar Features That Are Easy

It’s also worth looking at what Turkish grammar makes relatively straightforward: grammatical gender, plural formation and many regular suffix patterns.

Firstly, grammatical gender. This language, she has no grammatical gender! Forget Romance languages’ or Arabic’s two genders, or German’s three, or Swahili’s 18 (or so) “noun classes”.

So you don’t have to worry about using different pronouns, or modifying adjectives or even verbs.

Secondly, complicated plurals. There aren’t any! Some languages have all kinds of funky plural forms, like Arabic or German, who decide to all up change the word for its plural form. Turkish doesn’t do it.

Thirdly, verbal negation normally uses the suffix -ma/-me. Noun and adjective predicates use değil, while absence is expressed with yok.

Finally, many Turkish suffix patterns are regular, but their exceptions aren’t all rare: some occur in everyday words. Learn the pattern and its common exceptions together. Being able to think in rules is still an advantage when learning as an adult.

Wrap up

I hope that was a useful introduction to Turkish grammar’s main features.

If you have any other questions — or want contrasts with other languages — drop a comment below.