Learn the basic rules of Turkish sentence structure
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Intro |
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| Michael: How are sentences structured in Turkish? |
| Dilek: And are the rules rigid? |
| Michael: At TurkishClass101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Ben thinks he sees a famous Turkish singer as he's walking with a friend. He gestures to his friend who then notices the celebrity and responds, |
| "I know him! He's Tarkan!" |
| Nilgun Nevsehirli: Onu tanıyorum. O, Tarkan. |
| Dialogue |
| Nilgun Nevsehirli: Onu tanıyorum. O, Tarkan. |
| Ben Lee: Ben de tanıyorum onu. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Nilgun Nevsehirli: Onu tanıyorum. O, Tarkan. |
| Michael: "I know him! He's Tarkan!" |
| Ben Lee: Ben de tanıyorum onu. |
| Michael: "I know him too!" |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: In this lesson, we'll focus on sentence structure in Turkish. This dictates the way sentences are spoken, written, and understood. You may know that in English, the most common and widely used sentence structure is subject, verb, object, often abbreviated as S-V-O. Take the sentence, "I eat chocolate," for example. In this sentence, "I" is the subject, "eat" is the verb, and "chocolate" is the object. We see here the S-V-O sentence structure at play. |
| Michael: The typical Turkish word order is Subject-Object-Verb, which means that, unlike English, the object is expressed before the verb. Let's see how "I eat chocolate" translates in Turkish: |
| Dilek: Ben çikolata yerim. |
| Michael: First is the subject, "I," |
| Dilek: ben |
| Michael: next is the object, "chocolate," |
| Dilek: çikolata |
| Michael: and last is the verb, "eat," |
| Dilek: yerim. |
| Michael: As you might already know, in Turkish it's possible to omit the subject, because the suffixes at the end of verbs imply the subject, so the sentence ''I eat chocolate'' can also be shortened |
| Dilek: Çikolata yerim. |
| Michael: Now, let's see how the "subject, verb, object" structure applies to the sentences from the dialogue. Do you remember how Ben's friend says "I know him! He's Tarkan!" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Dilek as Nilgun Nevsehirli: Onu tanıyorum. O, Tarkan. |
| Michael: First is |
| Dilek: onu |
| Michael: which means ''him.'' Next is |
| Dilek: tanıyorum |
| Michael: which means ''I know.'' Last is the sentence |
| Dilek: O, Tarkan. |
| Michael: meaning ''He is Tarkan!'' As you can see the verb ''to be'' is omitted here. In Turkish, the ''to be'' verb when conjugated in the third person singular ending in |
| Dilek: -dır/dir/tır/tir |
| Michael: is generally omitted in daily life conversations. You make it explicit, only if you want to emphasize the meaning, talk about scientific facts or write academic documentation. |
| Here is another example |
| Dilek: O, yorgun. |
| Michael: She is tired. |
| Michael: Now let's take a look at our second sentence. |
| Do you remember how Ben Lee says "I know him too!" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Dilek as Ben Lee: Ben de tanıyorum onu. |
| Michael: Here you might be wondering what happened, as the object |
| Dilek: onu |
| Michael: appears after the verb. In this sentence, Ben wants to first stress that he "knows" something before expressing what he knows. It's a very specific situation, so it may seem confusing, but you'll get used to using Turkish like this with time. Here, we just want to show that sometimes it's possible to break the golden rule and move the verb before the object. This is because Turkish is a highly inflected language and words are always modified by suffixes that clearly show their meaning. Let's show this with our first sentence ''I eat chocolate'', if you invert the order to |
| Dilek: Yerim çikolata. |
| Michael: the meaning doesn't change, however the emphasis is on the verb ''I eat.'' |
| Michael: In this lesson you learned that the basic word order in Turkish is SOV and that a sentence is more flexible than in English because the relationship of words is marked by suffixes. |
| Expansion |
| Michael: The overall flexibility of Turkish word order, however, is not true for the order of morphemes, or the small parts of words that make up words. |
| Michael: For example, to say that ''you didn't eat,'' you need three morphemes: one to mark the past tense, one to mark the negation, and one to express the meaning of the English verb "eat" |
| Dilek: yemedim |
| Michael: Here, the order is fixed: the morpheme meaning "eat" |
| Dilek: ye- |
| Michael: after this is the negation morpheme |
| Dilek: -me- |
| Michael: last are the past tense and the subject morphemes |
| Dilek: -dim |
| Michael: And this order is very strict! |
| Review |
| Michael: Let's review. Respond to the prompts by speaking aloud. Then repeat after the native speaker focusing on pronunciation. |
| Do you remember how to say "I know him! He is Tarkan!" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Dilek as Nilgun Nevsehirli: Onu tanıyorum. O, Tarkan. |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Dilek as Nilgun Nevsehirli: Onu tanıyorum. O, Tarkan. |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Dilek as Nilgun Nevsehirli: Onu tanıyorum. O, Tarkan. |
| Michael: And do you remember how to say "I know him too!" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Dilek as Ben Lee: Ben de tanıyorum onu. |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Dilek as Ben Lee: Ben de tanıyorum onu. |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Dilek as Ben Lee: Ben de tanıyorum onu. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Dilek: Hoşçakalın! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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