I have met many Brits in Turkey / Spain exc. and over in other countries where they have purchased property and been living many years but don't speak the language of the country they are living in and expect from the locals to speak their language ,don't get me wrong but I find this a little bit rude rather then finding the person lazy. It is ok if you are just a visitor for a short time.
"everybody wants to learn how to speak english" is the common excuse. Anyway I am not going to go deeper into this subject...


Turkish people are very friendly and warm so they behave very closely and touchy..( ! by the way Turkish man kiss each other, so do not think they are Gay. This shows the closeness between people) . People may wish to have a communication with you, even some do like to show they speak a foreign language or use the possibility of doing some language practice.
Do not get anxious if people start to ask questions like ;
"Where are you from ?",
"Is it the first time in Turkey ?",
"Where do you stay ?" ,
"What is your name?".
This is just the habit of trying to chat.. If a Turkish person hears a Turkish word from a foreigner they would very much like that.
Turkish is a easy language to speak and read. It is written as it is pronounced. Just read the word in your own alphabet (in case it is the Latin one), you would nearly pronounce it perfect

several exception letters that you need to take care while speaking:
addition to c,g,i,o,s,u letters there are the "ç"(tche), "ğ"(hh), "ı"(ae), "ö"(?), "ş"(sche), "ü"(?).
Also the Turkish alphabet does not have the "x,q and w" letters.

There are 29 letters in the Turkish Alphabet:
A-B-C-Ç-D-E-F-G-Ğ-H-I-İ-J-K-L-M-N-O-Ö-P-R-S-Ş-T-U-Ü-V-Y-Z

Below you will find some words that might help you during your stay in Turkey....

Everyday phrases and polite expressions...
The reply to Hos Geldiniz (welcome) is Hoş bulduk (find well).

NUMBERS

WHILE TRAVELLING

WANT TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE LANGUAGE ...

Since 1928, Turkish has been written in a slightly modified Latin alphabet which is very nearly phonetic.

The Turkish alphabet has 8 vowels (A E I I O Ö U Ü ) and 21 consonants. The letters Q,W and X do not exist in Turkish. Most letters are pronounced pretty much as you would expect, but some are not. Once the phonetic value of all letters is known, then it is rather easy to pronounce any word one sees or to spell any word one hears.The following letters require explanation:

Aa = "a" as in "card" or "dark", never as "a" in"cat" or "back" ( kan = blood )

Cc = "J" as in "judge" ( can= life, soul, pronounced like "John" )

Çç = "ch" as in "church"( çay= tea, pronounced "chay", rhymes with "buy" )

Ee = "e" as in "bed" ( ekmek =bread )

Gg = "g" as in "get" ( gelin =bride )

G ( yumusak ge [soft g] Never appears as the first letter in a word; essentially silent; sometimes lengthens preceding vowel; sometimes pronounced like "y" in "yet"
(dag =mountain, pronounced daa , rhymes with the "baa" of "baa baa black sheep";
diger =other, pronounced diyer )

li( undotted "i" ) "u" as in "radium" or "i" as in "cousin" (isik =ligth, irmak = river )

Ii( dotted "i" ) ="i" as in "sit" ( bir = one, pronounced like "beer" )

Jj = "j" as in "azure" (garaj = garage, pronounced as in French & English )

Oo = "o" as in "fold"(okul =school )

Öö German "ö" as in "König" or French "eu" as in "peur"( göl = lake, rhymes with furl)

Ss="s" as in "sing", never pronounced like a "z" as the "s" in "his"(ses = voice)

Ss="sh"as in "ship" (sey = thing, pronounced "shey" , rhymes with "hay")

Uu "oo" as in "boot" (buz = ice, pronounced like "booze")

Üü German "ü" as in "für" or French "u" as in "tu" (gül = rose)

Zz="z" as in "zoo" (beyaz = white)

Turkish belongs to the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family. The earliest Turkic inscriptions date from the 7th century C.E. and Islamic texts written in Turkic appear in the 11th century. Turkish, the language of modern Turkey, is spoken by about 60 million people. Other important Turkic languages are Azeri (15 million speakers) and Uzbek (14 million speakers). Turkish formerly used the same alphabet as Arabic, but has been written in the Latin alphabet since 1928 as mentioned above; since 1940, Azeri and Uzbek have been written in Cyrillic but efforts are now under way to replace it with Latin.

As an Altaic language, Turkish has virtually nothing in common with English or other Indo-European languages except for some loan words, usually from French or English.

Turkish grammar is complex, but also quite regular. Its two most characteristic features are : (1) vowel harmony (vowels within a word follow certain harmonic patterns) and (2) agglutination (addition suffixes to words.) Through this process, astoundingly long word phrases can be encountered. For example, the following means, "Maybe you are one of those whom we were not able to Turkify."

Türklestiremedikimizlerdensinizdir.

Another interesting feature is that there is no gender in Turkish. The same word , "o", for example, means "he", "she" and "it".

Turks generally call each other by their given names. For example, a man whose name is Ahmet Kuran would be called Ahmet bey ( bey = Mr.), and his wife whose name is Ayse Kuran would be called Ayse hanim ( hanim =Ms.). Good friends drop the "bey" and "hanim". But a letter would be addressed to Bay ve Bayan Ahmet Kuran (Mr. and Mrs...).

<<<BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE