The Turkish language · Chapter 2
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.
2.1 Front vowels and back vowels
Turkish sorts its eight vowels by where the tongue is when you say them. Four are said with the tongue forward, and four with it pulled back.
| Front | e | i | ö | ü |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | a | ı | o | u |
A word that is Turkish to begin with usually keeps to one kind: gece, "night", and çiçek, "flower", have only front vowels; kapı, "door", and okul, "school", only back ones.
The endings keep to the same kind as the word. An ending doesn't have one vowel but two or four to choose from, and it takes the one that matches the last vowel before it. That is vowel harmony.
2.2 Endings with e or a
The plural ending is -ler or -lar. After a front vowel it is -ler, after a back vowel -lar:
| Word | Last vowel | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| ev, house | e, front | evler, houses |
| gül, rose | ü, front | güller, roses |
| kitap, book | a, back | kitaplar, books |
| okul, school | u, back | okullar, schools |
Evler büyük.
Kitaplar burada.
Only the last vowel counts. Kitap has an i and an a, and its plural follows the a.
2.3 Endings with i, ı, u or ü
Other endings have four vowels to choose from, and they follow two things about the last vowel: whether it is front or back, and whether the lips are rounded for it. o, ö, u and ü are rounded; a, e, ı and i are not.
| Last vowel | The ending's vowel |
|---|---|
| e or i | i |
| a or ı | ı |
| o or u | u |
| ö or ü | ü |
The question word mi is one of them. It is written as a word of its own, after the word it asks about, but it is said as part of that word and follows its last vowel. With it, a sentence becomes a yes-or-no question:
Kahve iyi mi?
Çay sıcak mı?
Su soğuk mu?
Bu süt mü?
Q marks a question. mi follows the word just before it: in Çay sıcak mı? that is sıcak, so mı, whatever the vowels of çay.
2.4 How endings are written in this book
Since an ending changes with the word it is added to, grammars of Turkish write it once, with capitals for the letters that change. This book does the same.
| Written | Stands for | An ending |
|---|---|---|
| A | e or a | -lAr, the plural: -ler or -lar |
| I | i, ı, u or ü | mI, the question word: mi, mı, mu or mü |
Other capitals come with the consonants that change, in the next chapter. A letter in brackets is one that is there only sometimes, as the y in -(y)I, which is used only after a vowel.
2.5 Where harmony doesn't hold
Words borrowed from Arabic, Persian, French and other languages often mix front and back vowels: kitap, "book", came from Arabic, otobüs, "bus", from French. Their endings still follow the last vowel: kitaplar, otobüsler.
A few borrowed words end in a consonant that was said with the tongue forward in the language they came from, and take front-vowel endings after a back vowel: saat, "hour" or "clock", becomes saatler, and harf, "letter of the alphabet", becomes harfler. Dictionaries mark them.
And a few endings never change their vowel. The best known is -(I)yor, the ending for what is happening now: geliyor, "is coming", and okuyor, "is reading", both end in -yor, though the vowel before it follows harmony as usual.