The Turkish language
How Turkish works, from its letters and sounds to the sentences you need to start reading, listening and talking: vowel harmony, the endings that do the work of English's small words, the verb and its tenses, and the participles that make Turkish's long words. It ends where real Turkish can take over.
Turkish is new here: this book for now, free to everyone.
- Letters and sounds
How Turkish is written and said: its 29 letters, the eight vowels, the letters English doesn't have, and where the stress falls.
- Vowel harmony
How an ending's vowel follows the last vowel of the word it is added to: the one rule behind almost every ending in Turkish.
- Consonants that change
How p, ç, t and k soften before a vowel, how endings that start with d or c harden after some consonants, and the letters y, n and s that keep two vowels apart.
- First sentences
How to greet people, point at things with bu, şu and o, say what there is and isn't with var and yok, and ask what something is.
- Being: endings, not a verb
How Turkish says "I am", "you are" and "it is" with endings on a word, how to say "not" with değil, and how to ask with mi.
- Nouns and adjectives
How nouns make their plural and when they don't, why Turkish has no word for "the", when bir means "a", and where adjectives go.
- In, from and to
How the endings -de, -den and -e say where something is, where it comes from and where it goes.
- The object, and the order of a sentence
How the ending -(y)I marks a definite object, why an indefinite one is left bare, and why the verb comes last.
- My house, Ali's house
How possessive endings say whose something is, how the genitive joins two nouns, and how Turkish makes compound nouns like Türk kahvesi.
- Having
How var and yok, with possessive endings, say what someone has and hasn't.
- The verb, and what is happening now
How a verb is built: its stem, -(I)yor for what is happening now, the personal endings, and -mA for "not".
- Asking questions
How to ask with mI after a verb, the question words, and where they go.
- The past: seen and heard
How -di tells what you saw happen and -miş what you heard or worked out, and why Turkish keeps the two apart.
- Plans, habits and offers
How -ecek says what will happen, and how the aorist says what usually happens and makes offers and promises.
- Telling, asking and being able
How to tell and ask someone to do something politely, how -ebil says "can", and how to say "let's".
- Numbers, time and money
How to count, tell the time, give prices and dates, and which endings numbers take.
- With, for, like, after
How Turkish puts its small relation words after the noun, and the endings each one wants: ile, için, gibi, kadar, göre, önce and sonra.
- Joining actions
How to join sentences with ve, ama and çünkü, and how endings like -ip, -erek and -ken join actions without them.
- The book I read
How Turkish makes relative clauses out of verbs: -en for "who does", -dik for "that someone did". The hard part of Turkish, and the last big step.
- Wanting, needing, if
How to say what you want, what you need and must do, and what happens if and when.
- Where to go next
What you can read, watch and do with the Turkish of this book, and how to keep going.