The Turkish Language

The Turkish language (Türkçe or Türk dili) belongs to the family of Turkish languages, whose geographical area extends from western China to the Balkans. This is in turn part of the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic languages. The languages ​​closest to Turkish are Azeri and Turkmen.

Turkish is the official language of the Republic of Turkey, where it has been spoken since medieval times, when the Turks from Central Asia settled in Anatolia, then part of the Byzantine Empire. It is also official in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. In some Balkan areas there is a variety known as Ottoman Turkish (Osmanlı Türkçesi), which is quite different from Turkish in Turkey. In several Western European countries there are important communities of Turkish speakers, recently emigrated from Turkey.

Turkish is an agglutinating language that is based on a system of suffixes and infixes added to the root of each word, which allows to express a large number of meanings with few words. His grammar usually has no exceptions. There is no gender grammatical morpheme.

He has had several writing systems. From the thirteenth century it was written with Arabic characters, until the reform undertaken in the 20s by the government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It was at that time that several initiatives of westernization of the country were carried out, with the belief that this would contribute to its modernization. The orthographic reform was accompanied by an attempt to “purge” nationalist, that is, to replace the huge number of language loans (especially Arabs) by words of Turkish origin, current goal today and has not reaped the expected successes.

The Turkish language is regulated by the Türk Dil Kurumu (Turkish Language Society, TDK).

Useful expressions
Hello: Merhaba
How are you?: Nasilsiniz?
Good: Iyiyim
Thanks: Sağol or Teşekkür ederim
Agree: Size or OK
Sorry: Pardon
Yes: Evet
No: Hayır
Goodbye: (the one who says goodbye) Güle güle
Goodbye: (the one who leaves) Hosçakalın
Good Morning: (mornings) Günaydın
Good morning: (during the day) Iyi günler
Good evening: Iyi akşamlar
Here: Burada
When ?: Ne zaman?
Why ?: Neden?
Where ?: Nerede?
What ?: Ne?
I do not understand: Anlamiyorum

Emergencies
Police: Polis
Ambulance: Ambulans
Stop !: Dur
Help !: Imdat
Fire !: Yangın
Hospital: Hastane
Doctor: Doktor

Shopping
Very expensive: Çok pahali
How much does this cost ?: Bu ne kadar?
Credit card: Kredi karti
Bargain: Pazarlik

Travel
Airport: Havaalanı
Port: Liman
Bus station: Otogar
Parking: Otopark
Ticket: Bilet
Station: Istasyon
Hours: Tarife
Box office: Gise
Tourist Office: Turizm ofisi
Taxi: Taksi
Pier: İskele