Spelling and pronunciation

Turkish script is almost like a phonetic transcription, so you will not have difficulty in reading and writing after you have learned what sound each letter in the alphabet stands for and how the letters combine to form syllables.

Suffixes

1 Inflectional suffixes

In most cases, Turkish uses inflectional suffixes where English uses words such as auxiliary verbs to show (for example, tense, person and mood) and prepositions to show (for example, place, time and direction).

Look at this example sentence:

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• Karıma / çiçek / alacağım.

       I will buy / flowers / for my wife.
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At first, you may find inflectional suffixes confusing, but once you get a feel for how they work, we believe that you will find them quite fascinating if, especially, you are a native speaker of a language such as English. A single word with a single suffix or a set of suffixes in Turkish may sometimes form a phrase, clause or sentence, for which you may need several or more words in English. 

Look at the words in italics in these sentences:

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• Sağdakini beğendim.                   

       I like the one on the right.

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• Bu duyduğum en kötü espri.         

       This is the worst joke I have ever heard.

 

• Saçımı kestireceğim.                     

       I’m going to have my hair cut.

 

• Ona güvenmemeliydin.                 

       You shouldn’t have trusted him/her.

 

2 Derivational suffixes

Like in English, derivational suffixes form new words:

 

• gazeteci       journalist 

• fırıncı          baker

 

• eğitimci       educationalist 

• politikacı     politician