A week into my Turkish language journey and I've started to have some breakthroughs. There's still a lot to learn and each new module throws up a bit more confusion but sticking with the absolute basics and understanding these inside-out has been an approach that is working so far. Thus, here are some of the things that I've discovered this month...
Turkish switches around the noun (e.g. water) and the verb (e.g. drink), in stark contrast to English language sentences.
For example, in English, you might say "I drink water", whilst in Turkish, that becomes "I water drink":
I = Ben
Drink = içerim
Water = su
I drink water = Ben su içerim
The suffix of the verb (e.g. içerim) 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. "su"[water], which I've included in sentences underneath the table:
English Pronoun | Turkish Pronoun | Changes to the verb [drink] |
I | Ben | içerim |
You | Sen | içersin |
We | Biz | içeriz |
She | O | içer |
He | O | içerler |
They | Onlar | içerler |
So, when placed in a full sentence, this becomes:
I drink water = Ben su içerim
You drink water = Sen su içersin
We drink water = Biz su içeriz
She/He drinks water = O su içer
They drink water = Onlar su içerler
Adding one final caveat into the mix, when making a statement that does not contain a pronoun - e.g. If shouting at someone to "Drink water!" - the suffix (like the pronoun) disappears completely and you are left with "Su iç!".
This rule - from what I can see - applies to any noun that you place in there (and any verb too but we'll get to that in Step 2 when we talk about eating - baby steps!). We can replace the noun water [su] with milk [süt], wine [şarap], or even soup [çorba] and everything stays the same in the sentence apart from the suffix to the base verb, conditional to the pronoun. 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: Milk | Noun: Wine | Noun: Soup |
I | Ben | Ben süt içerim | Ben şarap içerim | Ben çorba içerim |
You | Sen | Sen süt içersin | Sen şarap içersin | Sen çorba içersin |
We | Biz | Biz süt içeriz | Biz şarap içeriz | Biz çorba içeriz |
She | O | O süt içer | O şarap içer | O çorba içer |
He | O | O süt içer | O şarap içer | O çorba içer |
They | Onlar | Onlar süt içerler | Onlar şarap içerler | Onlar çorba içerler |
You'll have started to notice a few accents on letters and I recommend you taking a listen on google translate to the correct pronunciation but from my brief learning on this, the accent that you see on the Ş and the Ç (known as the Cedilla) are pronounced as a "shh" and a "chh", so wine is pronounced "sharap" and soup becomes "chorba". That's the simplest way I can try to describe it - sorry if that doesn't make any sense!
A good way to extend knowledge here is to start to use an English-to-Turkish Dictionary to find new drink-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 Su içerim [I drink water] or Şarap içeriz [We drink wine], and you're listening out for the suffix on the final word to decipher the pronoun being referred.
Brain hurting? Yup, mine was [is] hurting too. So, I think we'll leave this brain dump of lesson 1 right here, give you some time to digest, and next time, I'm going to cover a very similar concept, using eating rather than drinking.
If you don't want to wait, you can skip straight to the next step of learning basic Turkish (from someone who is also learning basic Turkish...) by clicking on the button below.