Turkish vocabulary


Turkish vocabulary[] is the set of words within the Turkish language. The language widely uses agglutination and suffixes to form words from noun and verb stems. Besides native Turkic words, Turkish vocabulary is rich in loanwords from Arabic, Persian, French and other languages.
This article is a companion to Turkish grammar and contains some information that might be considered grammatical. The purpose of this article is mainly to show the use of some of the yapım ekleri "structural suffixes" of the Turkish language, as well as to give some of the structurally important words, like pronouns, determiners, postpositions, and conjunctions.

Origins

Around 86% of the Turkish vocabulary is of Turkic origin. Most of the core vocabulary and the most commonly used words in Turkish, including those first acquired by children as they learn to speak, come from Turkic. Meanwhile, around 14% of Turkish words are of foreign origin, in particular Arabic, French, and Persian. According to the Turkish Language Association, 6,463 of these foreign words come from Arabic, 4,974 from French, 1,374 from Persian, 632 from Italian, 538 from English, 399 from Greek, and 147 from Latin.
The most significant linguistic influence in the Turkish language started with the Turks' conversion to Islam in the 10th century. The borrowing of Arabic and Persian words began during the Seljuk Empire, in which the long language contact between the Seljuk Turks and Persians in Iran led to Persianization and the adoption of the Persian language for official and literary use. As a result, educated Turks had access to the vocabularies of three languages: Oghuz Turkic as their native language as well as for dynastic and military purposes, Persian for cultural, artistic, literary, courtly and scholarly purposes, and Arabic for theological, juridical, scientific and religious purposes.
Borrowing from Arabic and Persian continued during the Ottoman Empire, alongside a new increased influence from French, Italian, English and other European languages due to trade, diplomacy and modernization efforts particularly in the 18th century, and the official language of the Ottoman Turks became Ottoman Turkish. Nevertheless, Ottoman Turkish differed significantly from the everyday language spoken by the general population and was largely unintelligible to ordinary people. The everyday Turkish, known as kaba Türkçe, was spoken by the less-educated and rural communities, and retained a much higher percentage of native Turkish vocabulary, which later served as the foundation for the modern Turkish language.
With the advent of the Turkish Republic in 1923 came the attempt to unify the languages of the people and the administration, and to westernize the country. The modern Turkish alphabet, based on the Latin script, was introduced. Language reform efforts led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk were also introduced in an aim to remove foreign loanwords in Turkish and restore a more Turkic-based vocabulary, where the majority of Arabic and Persian words were replaced by:
Turkish words surviving in speech, obsolete Turkish words, new words formed regularly from the agglutinative structure of Turkish, and entirely new words or formations. As a result, many foreign words had Turkish equivalents. Some foreign words became outdated and fell out of use during the republican period, while others remained in daily conversation. For example, the Turkish word güney became the standard term for "south", replacing the Arabic loanword cenup, but in some cases the foreign word remained dominant - such as dünya being more commonly used for "world" than the Turkish equivalent yeryüzü. In other instances, both words remained in use, like isim and ad for "name", which are often used interchangeably.

Nouns

Turkish nouns and pronouns have no grammatical gender, but have six grammatical cases: nominative or absolute, accusative, dative, locative, ablative, genitive. There are two grammatical numbers, singular and plural.

Nouns from nouns and adjectives

The suffix -ci attached to a noun denotes a person involved with what is named by the noun:
The suffix -lik attached to a noun or adjective denotes an abstraction, or an object involved with what is named by the noun:

Nouns from verbs

The noun in -im denoting an instance of action was mentioned in the introduction to Turkish grammar.
For more examples on word derivations, see the related article: List of replaced loanwords in Turkish.

Adjectives

Classification of adjectives

Adjectives can be distinguished as being
  • descriptive, or
  • determinative : in particular:
  • *demonstrative,
  • *numerical,
  • *indefinite,
  • *interrogative.
For an intensive form, the first consonant and vowel of a adjective can be reduplicated; a new consonant is added too, m, p, r, or s, but there is no simple rule for which one:
The determinative adjectives, or determiners, are an essential part of the language, although Turkish takes some of its determiners from Arabic and Persian.

Demonstrative adjectives

  • o "that",
  • bu "this",
  • şu "this" or "that".
These are also demonstrative pronouns. Used with plural nouns, these adjectives represent the English "those" and "these"; there is no such inflexion of adjectives in Turkish.

Numerical adjectives

The cardinal numbers are built up in a regular way from the following:
Units follow multiples of ten; powers of ten come in descending order. For example:
The cardinals are generally not used alone, but a general word for a unit is used, such as:
  • tane, literally "grain";
  • kişi "person".
Remembering that the plural suffix is not used when numbers are named, we have:
From the cardinal numbers, others can be derived with suffixes:
  • ordinal -nci
  • : yedi "seven" → yedinci "seventh"
  • :: Sırada yedincisiniz.
  • ::"You are seventh in line."
  • distributive -er
  • : bir "one" → birer "one each"
  • : iki "two" → ikişer "two each"
  • collective -z
  • : iki "two" → ikizler "twins"

Indefinite adjectives

The cardinal bir "one" can be used as an indefinite article.
Other so-called indefinite adjectives might be listed as follows:
  • universal: her "each, every", tüm "the whole", bütün "whole, all";
  • existential: bazı "some", biraz "a little", birkaç "a few, several";
  • negative: hiç "none";
  • quantitative: az "little, few", çok "much, many";
  • distinguishing: başka, diğer, öteki, öbür "other";
  • identifying: aynı "same".

Interrogative adjectives

  • hangi "which?"
  • kaç "how much?" or "how many?"
  • : Saat kaç? "What time is it?"
  • : Kaç saat? "How many hours?"
  • nasıl "what sort?"

Adjectives from nouns

Added to a noun, -li or -siz indicates presence or absence, respectively, of what is named by the noun.
The suffix -li also indicates origin:
Finally, added to the verbal noun in -me, the suffix -li creates the necessitative verb.
The native speaker may perceive -meli as an indivisible suffix denoting compulsion.
Added to a noun for a person, -ce makes an adjective.

Adverbs

Adjectives can generally serve as adverbs:
The adjective might then be repeated, as noted earlier. A repeated noun also serves as an adverb:
The suffix -ce makes nouns and adjectives into adverbs. One source calls it the benzerlik or görelik ''eki, considering it as another case-ending.
  • Attached to adjectives, -ce is like the English -ly:
  • :güzelce "beautifully"
  • Attached to nouns, -ce can be like the English like:
  • :Türkçe konuş- "speak like Turks"
Adverbs of place include:
  • aşağı/yukarı "down/up"
  • geri/ileri "backwards/forwards"
  • dışarı/içeri "outside/inside"
  • beri/öte "hither/yon"
  • karşı "opposite"
These can also be treated as adjectives and nouns.
Also, the suffix -re can be added to the demonstrative pronouns o'', bu, and şu, as well as to the interrogative pronoun ne, treated as a noun. The result has cases serving as adverbs of place:
  • nereye/buraya/oraya "whither?/hither/thither"
  • nerede/burada/orada "where?/here/there"
  • nereden/buradan/oradan "whence?/hence/thence"

Postpositions

With genitive and absolute

The following are used after the genitive pronouns benim, bizim, senin, sizin, onun, and kimin, and after the absolute case of other pronouns and nouns:
  • gibi "like, as";
  • için "for";
  • ile "with";
  • kadar "as much as".
For example, a certain company may describe its soft drink as:
However, another company may say of itself:
Thus the label of postposition does not adequately describe gibi; Schaaik proposes calling it a predicate, because of its use in establishing similarity:
The particle ile can be both comitative and instrumental; it can also join the preceding word as a suffix. Examples:
  • Deniz ile konuştuk or Deniz'le konuştuk
  • :"Deniz and I, we spoke."
  • :
  • çekiç ile vur- or çekiçle vur-
  • :"hit with a hammer"

With dative

Used after nouns and pronouns in the dative case are:
  • doğru "towards";
  • göre "according to";
  • kadar "as far as";
  • karşı "against".

With ablative

  • önce/sonra "before/after";
  • beri "since";
  • itibaren "from…on";
  • dolayı "because of".

With absolute

The following postpositions are case-forms of nouns with the third-person possessional suffix; they can be understood as forming nominal compounds, always indefinite, with the preceding words :
  • bakımdan "from the point of view of" ;
  • hakkında "concerning, about" ;
  • tarafından "by the agency of" ;
  • yüzünden "because of".

Interjections

Some samples include:
  • secular:
  • * Öf ;
  • *Haydi "Come on": Haydi kızlar okula "Girls to school!" ;
  • invoking the Deity:
  • *implicitly:
  • **Aman "Mercy";
  • **Çok şükür "Much thanks";
  • *explicitly:
  • **Allah Allah "Goodness gracious";
  • **Hay Allah;
  • **Vallah "By God ".

Conjunctions

Some Turkish conjunctions are borrowed from Persian and Arabic.

Logical conjunction

The cumulative sense of the English "A and B" can be expressed several ways:
  • A ve B ;
  • B ile A ;
  • A, B de.
For the adversative sense of "but" or "only", there are ama and fakat, also yalnız.
For emphasis: hem A hem B "both A and B".

Logical disjunction

For the sense of English "…or":
  • A veya B;
  • ya A veya B;
  • ya A ya da B.
The pattern of the last two can be extended:
  • ya A ya B veya C;
  • ya A ya B ya da C.

Implication

  • B, çünkü A "B, because A".
  • ) A'ysa, B'dir. "If A, then B."
Both çünkü and eğer are Persian; the latter is not generally needed, because the conditional form of the verb is available.

The conjunction ''ki''

The Persian conjunction ki brings to Turkish the Indo-European style of relating ideas :
Thus ki corresponds roughly to English "that", but with a broader sense:

Verbs

The verb-stem temizle- "make clean" is the adjective temiz "clean" with the suffix -le-. Many verbs are formed from nouns or adjectives with -le:
The suffix -iş- indicates reciprocal action, which is expressed in English by "each other" or "one another".
)
but rather "to make love with each other."
Many causative verbs are formed with -dir-.