***Disclaimer - this is a learning process for me so I apologize if you spot any glaring errors. I've been learning Turkish for a month now and thought it would be useful to share my understanding to reinforce it in my brain (and who knows - it might help you too...).***
If you're joining me fresh from part 1, where we covered the basics of talking about drinks and drinking, welcome! This section will follow a very similar track and hopefully this starts to create some repetition and recognition in your mind regarding some of the common patterns. So, here we go again:
Turkish switches around the noun (e.g. chicken) and the verb (e.g. eat), in stark contrast to English language sentences.
For example, in English, you might say "I eat chicken", whilst in Turkish, that becomes "I chicken eat":
I = Ben
Eat = yerim
Chicken = tavuk
I eat chicken = Ben tavuk yerim
The suffix of the verb (e.g. yerim) changes depending upon the pronoun (e.g. I/you/we/she/he/they) possessing it.
Once you've memorized your Turkish pronouns, this is less complicated than it sounds. I've provided some basic examples in the table. Throughout, the noun spelling remains the same, i.e. "tavuk"[chicken], which I've included in sentences underneath the table:
English Pronoun | Turkish Pronoun | Changes to the verb [eat] |
I | Ben | yerim |
You | Sen | yersin |
We | Biz | yeriz |
She | O | yer |
He | O | yer |
They | Onlar | yerler |
So, when placed in a full sentence, this becomes:
I eat chicken = Ben tavuk yerim
You eat chicken = Sen tavuk yersin
We eat chicken = Biz tavuk yeriz
She/He eats chicken = O tavuk yer
They eat chicken = Onlar tavuk yerler
Adding one final caveat into the mix, when making a statement that does not contain a pronoun - e.g. If shouting at someone to "Eat chicken!" (that very common saying... ;-) )- the suffix (like the pronoun) disappears completely and you are left with "Tavuk ye!".
As mentioned in part 1, this overall rule - from what I can see - applies to any noun that you place in a sentence with an owner (pronoun), i.e. the noun remains the same, whilst the pronoun can change and the verb can have a different ending [suffix] depending upon the pronoun. In part 1, we were focussing only on the verb "drink" but now - using "eat" as our example verb - this is hopefully starting to show some logical form (or maybe I'm complicating things?!)...
For example, we can replace the noun chicken [tavuk] with bread [ekmek], apple [elma], or even tomatoes [domates] and everything stays the same in the sentence apart from the suffix to this base noun. And yes, Turkish people say that they "drink" soup so don't be fooled by that one (makes complete sense when you think about it...)!
ENG Pronoun | TUR Pronoun | Noun: Bread | Noun: Apple | Noun: Domates |
I | Ben | Ben ekmek yerim | Ben elma yerim | Ben domates yerim |
You | Sen | Sen ekmek yersin | Sen elma yersin | Sen domates yersin |
We | Biz | Biz ekmek yeriz | Biz elma yeriz | Biz domates yeriz |
She | O | O ekmek yer | O elma yer | O domates yer |
He | O | O ekmek yer | O elma yer | O domates yer |
They | Onlar | Onlar ekmek yerler | Onlar elma yerler | Onlar domates yerler |
A good way to extend knowledge here is to start to use an English-to-Turkish Dictionary to find new food-based nouns [objects] to add in and start practicing those sentences with the new words.
In reality, many native speakers will drop the pronoun altogether - not helpful for learning the basics, I know!
So, you're happy you've got the basics above, just like I was, and then... you speak to a real-life Turkish person who tells you "Actually, you don't really need to say Ben for I because most people just jump straight to the next word in the sentence - in Turkish, that being the noun. So, you might hear a native speaker shorten a sentence to Ekmek yerim [I eat chicken] or Elma yeriz [We eat an apple], and you're listening out for the suffix on the final word to decipher the pronoun being referred.
Brain still hurting? I'm with you on that one - like I say, this is early days for me also and I feel your pain. If you're unsure where to start your language learning journey, have a look at my intro post, where I offer up some examples of tools to help you to navigate this seemingly impossible stage.
OK, we'll leave it there for now. I have an idea of what to cover next time but what happens in your brain and what you write down on paper when it comes to Turkish, can be very different things. So, I might take some time to gather my thoughts too, if that's OK with you :-) Until next time, hoşçakal (bye)!