Consonants that change

3.1 Hard and soft consonants

Turkish sorts its consonants into two kinds, as it sorts its vowels. Put a finger on your throat and say zzz, then sss. For z the throat buzzes, and for s it doesn't. Turkish grammars call consonants like s hard and those like z soft.

There are eight hard consonants: ç, f, h, k, p, s, ş and t. Turkish schoolchildren learn them as a name, fıstıkçı Şahap, "Şahap the pistachio seller", whose consonants are those eight and no others. Every other consonant is soft.

Four of the hard consonants change, each into a soft partner said in the same place in the mouth, with the throat buzzing:

Two changes happen where an ending meets a word, and they go in opposite directions. A word's last consonant softens before an ending that starts with a vowel. And an ending's first consonant hardens after a word that ends in a hard consonant. Both make the joint easier to say, and Turkish spells both as they are said.

3.2 Softening before a vowel: kitap, kitabı

When an ending that starts with a vowel is added to a word that ends in p, ç, t or k, the consonant usually turns into its soft partner:

k after a vowel becomes ğ, and after n it becomes g: çocuğu, but rengi. The ğ is said as chapter 1 had it: after a back vowel it lengthens the vowel, so çocuğu sounds like "çocuu"; between front vowels it is a light y, so ekmeği, from ekmek, "bread", sounds like "ekmeyi".

The endings in the table are two of the many that start with a vowel. -(I)m is "my": kitabım is "my book". -I says "his" or "her", and also marks a word as the object of a verb, so kitabı is "his book", or "the book" in "I'm reading the book". Both have chapters of their own later. The change is the same before every such ending.

The gloss at stands for -DA, the ending that says where something is. English needs in, at or on for it, depending on the place; Turkish has the one ending for all three.

Before an ending that starts with a consonant, nothing changes: kitaplar, "books", and çocuklar, "children", keep their p and k.

3.3 Words that keep their consonant

Not every word softens. Most words of one syllable keep their consonant: top, "ball", becomes topu; saç, "hair", saçı; at, "horse", atı. A few short words soften all the same, as renk does.

Words of two syllables or more usually soften when they end in p, ç or k. With t it is less regular: armut softens, but saat, "clock", becomes saati, and ceket, "jacket", ceketi. Some borrowed words of any length keep their consonant too.

Names keep their spelling whatever ending follows: Zeynep'i, Mehmet'in.

Turkish dictionaries say which words soften. An entry like kitap (-bı) means that before a vowel the word is kitab-. When you learn a noun that ends in p, ç, t or k, learn that with it.

Verbs can soften too, though only a few do, and two of them are common: et-, "do", and git-, "go". The ederim in teşekkür ederim, "thank you", literally "I do thanks", is et- before a vowel.

3.4 Endings that start with d: evde, kitapta

The other change goes the other way. Some endings start with d, and after a hard consonant that d hardens to t. The commonest is -DA, which says where something is:

So the ending has four forms, -de, -da, -te and -ta. The book writes it -DA: D stands for d or t, as A stands for e or a. After a vowel or a soft consonant, D is d; after one of the eight hard consonants, it is t. Its vowel follows harmony, as in the last chapter.

The word's own consonant doesn't soften here, since the ending starts with a consonant: kitapta keeps its p.

Turkish writes an apostrophe between a name and its endings, as in İstanbul'da; it is not said.

Other endings start with D and change in the same way:

-DI and -DIr have both D and I, so each has eight forms: -di, -dı, -du, -dü, -ti, -tı, -tu and -tü for -DI, and the same with an r for -DIr. They are no harder for that. D follows the consonant before it, and I the vowel.

3.5 Endings that start with c: Türkçe

A few endings start with c, and after a hard consonant it hardens to ç, in the same way. The book writes it C, for c or ç.

-CI makes a word for someone whose work has to do with a thing, and often for the shop that sells it:

-CA makes the name of a language from the name of a people:

The name of the language itself shows the rule: Türk ends in k, a hard consonant, so the ending is -çe.

3.6 Keeping two vowels apart: y, n and s

Turkish doesn't let two vowels meet where an ending joins a word. When the word ends in a vowel and the ending starts with one, a consonant goes between them, and grammars call it a buffer. Since the buffer is there only after a vowel, the book writes it in brackets: -(y)A. Which buffer an ending takes is part of the ending: most take y, a few take s or n.

y is the commonest:

The gloss I is the ending -(y)Im, "I am". Turkish has endings like it for "you are" and "we are", and they come in chapter 5.

s comes in one ending: -(s)I, "his", "her" or "its". Turkish has one ending for all three, and doesn't say which is meant. The gloss under it is its, and the English says his, her or its, as the sentence needs.

n is the buffer in -(n)In, "of": evin, "of the house", but arabanın, "of the car". It also turns up where no two vowels meet. After -(s)I, and after bu, "this", and şu and o, "that", the endings -DA, -DAn, -(y)A, -(y)I and -(n)In take an n before them: evinde, "in his house"; arabasına, "to her car"; bunda, "in this"; ona, "to him". bu, şu and o take it before the plural too: bunlar, "these"; onlar, "those", "they".

In the second line of an example, a buffer goes with the ending that needs it: kapı-yı, araba-sı, ev-i-nde.

3.7 Reading an ending

With D and C, every changing letter in the book's endings has its capital. An ending is read letter by letter, each capital chosen by what comes before it:

The last row is the other half of keeping vowels apart. An ending that starts with a vowel in brackets drops it after a vowel: -(I)m, "my", gives kitabım, "my book", but arabam, "my car".

So -DAn, "from", is d or t, then e or a, then n: evden, okuldan, otobüsten, kitaptan. And -(y)A, "to", is y after a vowel, then e or a: eve, okula, arabaya, and kitaba, where the word's p softens before the vowel. Softening isn't in the notation: it belongs to the word, not the ending.

One word with five endings shows all of it: