Turkish grammar A1: beginner
The complete guide from A1 to B1: the rules, examples to listen to, the usual mistakes.
- 0 · Letters and sounds
- A1 · Beginner
- A2 coming soon
- B1 coming soon
Level A1 covers the grammar of first exchanges in Turkish: saying who and where one is, counting and telling the time, saying what one is doing, did, will do and usually does, where one goes and comes from, what one has, and asking, suggesting, describing and comparing. Almost everything in it is expressed by suffixes added one after another to a noun or a verb stem.
What A1 holds
- the noun sentence with its personal endings: öğretmenim (“I’m a teacher”), evdeyiz (“we’re at home”);
- the plural, the five case endings (locative, dative, ablative, accusative, genitive) and the possessive suffixes;
- four tenses: the present continuous in -iyor, the past in -di, the future in -ecek and the aorist in -ir or -er, with the past of the copula;
- the imperative, the optative of the first person, and a few suffixes and small words that describe, compare and join.
What is new for an English speaker
- suffixes where English has separate words: evde (“in the house”), evim (“my house”), geliyorum (“I am coming”);
- vowel harmony: the vowel of a suffix changes with the last vowel of the word, so “in” is -de in evde and -da in okulda;
- no word for “to be” in the present and no verb “to have”: Yorgunum (“I’m tired”), Arabam var (“I have a car”);
- the verb at the end of the sentence: Ali şimdi Türkçe öğreniyor (“Ali is learning Turkish now”);
- no grammatical gender (o is “he”, “she” and “it”) and no article “the”;
- cases where English has prepositions: otobüse binmek (“to get on the bus”), kediden korkmak (“to be afraid of the cat”).
The usual difficulties
- the vowel of each suffix, chosen by two-way or four-way harmony;
- the sound changes at the joints: buffer y and n, -ta after a voiceless consonant, consonant softening (kitap, kitabı);
- the accusative, used for a definite object and left out for an indefinite one: kitap okuyorum, kitabı okuyorum;
- the order of the words, every modifier before what it modifies: masanın üstünde (“on the table”).
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The noun sentence
A Turkish sentence need not contain a verb: a noun or an adjective takes a personal ending and is then a complete sentence, Öğrenciyim (“I am a student”).
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The plural and place
The plural suffix and the locative case are the first suffixes added to a noun, one with two-way harmony, the other with two-way harmony and a change of consonant.
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Numbers and time
Turkish numbers are regular: the tens and hundreds are made by putting words side by side, the ordinals with one suffix.
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The present tense
A Turkish verb is a stem followed by suffixes in a fixed order: the stem, the negative, the tense, the person.
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Going to and coming from
English “to” and “from” are expressed in Turkish by two cases, the dative in -(y)A and the ablative in -DAn.
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Possession
In Turkish the thing owned, not the owner, carries the mark of possession: “my house” is evim, “Ali’s house” Ali'nin evi, with a suffix on ev in both.
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The object
The direct object of a Turkish verb takes the accusative when it is definite, and stays bare when it is not: the accusative ending does the work of the English article “the”.
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The past tense
The past tense in -DI tells what happened and is over, as the English simple past does.
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The future tense
The future in -(y)AcAk expresses what will happen, what is decided and what is forecast.
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The aorist
The aorist (geniş zaman, “the broad tense”) is the tense of what is done as a rule: habits, general truths, likes and dislikes.
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The imperative and the optative
The imperative tells someone to act; the optative of the first person offers or suggests acting oneself or together, and the imperative of the third person lets someone else act and makes the set wishes of everyday life.
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Adjectives and joining words
A Turkish adjective stands before its noun and never agrees with it.