Turkish
Türkçe
Turkish is not Indo-European but belongs to the Turkic family, which reaches into Central Asia. It works by agglutination: suffixes stack at the end of the word, so that a single Turkish word can translate a whole English sentence. In 1928 it abandoned the Arabic alphabet for the Latin one, in a reform that also set aside a large part of its Arabic and Persian vocabulary.
- Family
- Turkic
- Script
- Latin
- Speakers
- ≈ 85 million
- Where
- Turkey, Cyprus, the Balkans
- In the game
- Common language
How to spot it
The dotless ı and the silent ğ, plus ş and ç. An agglutinative language: suffixes stack up at the end of words.
A few sentences
-
Her sabah çay içerim, kahve değil.
Every morning I drink tea, not coffee.
-
Bir bardak su alabilir miyim?
Could I have a glass of water?
-
Şemsiyemi evde bıraktım.
I have left my umbrella behind at home.
-
Bugün hava kapalı.
It is overcast today.
-
Telefonum çalmıyor.
My phone is not ringing.