Lesson Transcript

Hello, I'm Seda. Welcome to Turkishclass 101.com. Today we'll talk about ordinal numbers, which are like 1st, 2nd, 3rd in English. So before we start, let's remember the regular numbers. We have lessons about regular numbers. If you don't know them if you didn't study before, please study the numbers, regular numbers, then come back to this lesson. So this will be just a reminder. So I'll say it quickly. So let's start counting together. Do you remember the first one?
1 Bir
2 İki
3 Üç
4 Dört
5 Beş
6 Altı
7 Yedi
8 Sekiz
9 Dokuz
10 On
one more time
1 Bir
2 İki
3 Üç
4 Dört
5 Beş
6 Altı
7 Yedi
8 Sekiz
9 Dokuz
10 On
So these are basic numbers, and as a rule, to make the make regular numbers into ordinal numbers, we add the suffix “inci”. So, for example, for 1 bir, we add inci, birinci, Birinci, meaning the first. But you know that we have Turkish vowel harmony rules. So you need to study that before adding any suffix to a Turkish word, because that main rule decides which kind of vowel will go into the suffix. So in this case, we can say inci, we can add inci ıncı, uncu, or üncü.
So we have four basic suffixes for making ordinal numbers. So, for example, for 1 bir, birinci for 3, üç, üçüncü for 5, beş, beşinci; for dokuz, 9, dokuzuncu. So you can hear the sounds. They follow the harmony rules. But I know it's a little bit complicated, but we have a lot of out of rule things for ordinal numbers. In Turkish. I told this before. In Turkish, two vowels can't come together, like a &a i &i, they can't come together. If there are words with two vowels together, they probably came from another language, as in I gave this example, as in saat means clock or time, which came from Arabic. Other than that, Turkish words can't be two vowels together. So we add buffer letters in between. If we are going to add a suffix starting with a vowel, and we have a word ending with a vowel, we need to add a buffer letter in between. These buffer letters are “y, ş, s, n”. Let me check if I forget one. Yes. So I have a trick for you. Actually, we have a word. “yaşasın”. Hey. It means like hey, like something like that. Hooray. Hey, it means that! Yaşasın! Hey, you're so happy and you're celebrating. And when you take the vowels out of that word yaşasın, “y,ş,s,n” are left.
So these are the buffer letters. Maybe you can remember like that. This was it. And we have other kind of out of rules, out of rule numbers with dört 4. Besides vowel harmony rules, we have consonant rules as well. Some hard sound consonants get softened, or some soft sound vowels harden sometimes. So in dört, t is hard. So when we add the suffix üncü here dört + üncü. We make the “t”, “d”, so we can say it easily. That's the only reason. Dörtüncü it's hard to say with R and T and Ü like, it's all over here, dörtüncü. It's hard to say, so we soften it like dört. dördüncü instead of dört, when we add specific suffix, we say dörd with D. So don't worry. I will say all the numbers one by one. I'm just talking about the rules now. So we have two more out of rule thing. One is set with seven, the other is with six. I have to check.
One is with seven, the other is with six. Seven is yedi. It ends with “İ” already. Like I the letter I. So, you know, we need to add the suffix “inci”. So instead of add the suffix inci and put a buffer letter, we thought we already have İ over there, so we need to assume that that's the part of suffix. So we just add “nci”. So we make yedinci. We drop the İ from the suffix. We add it to the yedinci. And it's the same with the six. So we have altı , six altı. Instead of adding ıncı, we drop “ı”, because we already have”ı” the over in the six, and we make “altıncı”. Okay, now you know all about the rules. Let's say the numbers together, okay?
Birinci
İkinci
Üçüncü
Dördüncü
Beşinci
Altıncı
Yedinci
Sekizinci
Dokuzuncu
Onuncu
That’s it guys. And before I go, I want to give you a little bit of cultural insight about ordinal numbers. It is not about ordinal numbers, but the sentence is about the ordinal numbers.
Birinci cemre havaya
İkinci cemre suya
Üçüncü cemre toprağa.
It literally means that, cemre means like is fire, emerald a residue from fire, It comes from Arabic
It is something like:
1st fire to the air
2nd fire to the water
3rd fire to the earth
So why do we use this? We have specific times. This cemre lets us know that spring is coming. There are different opinions on where this belief comes from. But the one I like is from Samanic beliefs. Cemre, fire actually when you look out the sky, some stars when they are a little bit far away, their wave lights a little bit longer, the stars loko reddish. So they look like burning fire, when they are in the sky on those specific days, that it says it tells the time, actually when you look at the sky and watch the sky, you can tell what time it is, the month, the season. You can tell a lot by looking at the sky. They look at the sky, they see those stars and they say “hmm the spring is coming”. When they see the first one, they say the fire falls to air, and warms the air. And the second fire falls into the water and the water gets warmer and the third one falls into the earth and it warms the soil. And then spring is here. I really like it. Every year we say that sentence to let us know that spring is coming.
So that’s it guys! I hope you liked the lesson. Please leave some comments and you know I don’t know if you are confused about the numbers and the rules. I will see you next time. Bye! Görüşürüz.
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