facts about the turkish language : a thread

1- in 1928, thanks to atatürk's (founder of turkey) reforms, the ottoman turkish alphabet was replaced with latin alphabet. literacy rate increased dramatically after this reform. in addition to that, atatürk and "turkish language association" brought back many turkic words.

2- turkish is being known for vowel harmony, agglutination and no grammatical gender. these are the distinctive characteristics of turkic languages.

3- unlike english, he/she/they/it distinction doesn't exist in turkish. "o" is a personal pronoun that can be used for anything ! "o" and its variations can be seen in other turkic languages.

4- turkish language has SOV order and it might be hard for turkish speakers to speak english fluently since the orders are so so different !

5- turkish is full of strange idioms and phrases ! even though this text is in english, it was written with the mindset of a turkish speaker.

6- according to historians and linguists, turkic people did not have a word for "hello". instead, they preferred to great each other with expressions such as "esenlikler" (i wish you well/good health) that's why we turkic speakers use merhaba/selam.

7- turkish has 3 demonstrative pronouns: bu/şu/o

8- because of agglutinaition, we have really long words. don't worry we don't use them on a daily basis !

"muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriverebilemeyeceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine"

"kuyruksallayangillerimsileştiricisizlendiriveremeyebilecekkenkilerdenmişsinizcesine"

9- wanted to add this also !

"çirkin mirkin" (ugly, or anything like that)
"sevgi mevgi"
"korku morku"

second words are meaningless and it's kinda like the shm-reduplication in yiddish. https://twitter.com/durulangs/status/1387375575958970368?s=19

10- we have a letter called "soft g", which is ğ. there isn't a word that starts with ğ ! people might say it just makes the previous letter longer but that's kinda wrong. in standard turkish, which is istanbul dialect, ğ is not emphasized, however, it exists in other dialects.

11- a lot of people might say turkish sounds like the way it's written. we tend to shorten the words while speaking tho! variations are seen in different dialects.

yapacağım >> yapıcam/yapc(ç)am
gidiyorsun >> gidiyosun/gidiyon

12- i think one of our past tense might be strange to foreigners: -mış/-miş/-muş/-müş

it's mostly used for past events that the speaker didn't witness. there are other ways of using this past tense, but this is the main usage of it.

duru yapmış = (i heard that) duru did it.

taking a break to say this: i have never said my language is superior or these feautures/facts are out of the world. i was bored and decided to make this thread for basic information. i'm not a linguist nor do i claim to be. it's just for fun :o

interrupting once again to say you can ask me anything related to turkish and turkic languages/people ! you can dm, use cc or simply reply to this thread ! https://curiouscat.me/durulangs 

13- due to language reform after ottoman, arb/fr/fa loanwords have turkic alternatives and synonyms are commonly used in daily conversations.

14- turkish verbs that don't exist in english

aşermek: craving for certain foods during pregnancy
dertleşmek: having a heart-to-heart conversation with someone
küsmek: stop talking to someone (could be temporary) due to a behaviour/statement that you didn't like

15- foods that have turkish/turkic origins

yogurt
baklava
dolma
pastrami
shawarma
kefir