lingsua

For those of you who are new to Use Your Language Day, it’s a celebration of linguistic diversity on Tumblr that has been organised on the 7th of May every year since 2014. The idea behind it is that users give up blogging in English for 24 hours and opt to use their native language (or for native English speakers: any other language[s] they speak/are learning) instead. It’s a lot of fun for everyone involved and always great to see new friendships formed through the use of languages other than English.

If you intend on participating, you can tag your posts with #use your language day or #uyld, if you wish to connect with other participants. If you want to find other people speaking your language, the suggested language tags are #uyld: [language] (e.g. “uyld: italiano” or “uyld: français”)

Kendi means self. You add the possessed ending to make it a reflexive pronoun.

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kendi+m - kendim - myself

kendi+n - kendin - yourself

kendi+si - kendi(si)* - himself/herself/itself

kendi+miz - kendimiz - ourselves

kendi+niz - kendiniz - yourselves

kendi+leri - kendileri - themselves

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*(kendi and kendisi are interchangeable, but kendi is used more commonly)

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Reflexive Pronouns + Cases

kendim+e - kendime - to myself (dat.)

kendin+e - kendine - to yourself (dat.)

kendi+e - kendine* - to himself/herself/itself (dat.)

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*(the ‘n’ is added in third person form because in Turkish two vowels are not meant to go together, however this does make the third person form identical to the second person)

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kendin+den - kendinden - from yourself (abl.)

kendimiz+le - kendimizle - with ourselves (inst.)

kendiniz+in - kendinizin - of yourselves (gen.)

kendimiz+den - kendimizden - from ourselves (abl.)

kendi+de, kendisi+de - kendinde, kendisinde* - on himself/herself (loc.)

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*(the ‘n’ is also added again to the third person forms because of consonant and sound harmony rules)

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Dün kendime bir telefon aldım.

Yesterday I bought a phone for myself.

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Kendimde cesaret bulamıyorum.

I cannot find the courage in myself.

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Sizin kendinize güveniniz yok.

You do not have confidence in yourself.

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Bu kendimin resmi.

This is a picture of myself.

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Kendine iyi bak!

Look after yourself (Take care!)

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kendi kendime - by myself, on my own

kendi kendine - by yourself, on your own

kendi kendi(si)ne - by himself/herself/itself, on his/her/its own

kendi kendimize - by ourselves, on our own

kendi kendinize - by yourselves, on your own

kendi kendilerine - by themselves, on their own

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Kendi kendime Türkçe öğrendim.

I learned Turkish on my own.

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Kendi kendine karar verdi.

She decided on her own.

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Kendi kendine mırıldanıyor.

He murmurs to himself.

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Çocuklar kendi kendilerine oynuyorlar.

The children are playing on their own.

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Kendi (own)

kendi evim - my own home

kendi araban - your own car

kendi bahçesi - her own garden

kendi işimiz - our own job

kendi kararınız - your own decision

The most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French and Persian but also Italian, English, and Greek. However, some Armenian loanwords also have found their way into Turkish especially in the eastern Turkish dialects. ‘…Turkish speakers in Western Anatolia naturally tended to borrow agricultural, construction, and other terms from Greek, while those in Eastern Anatolia tended to borrow them from Armenian.’ (x)

Here are some common Armenian words in modern Turkish:

Pazı (chard (type of a beet) or biceps) from  բազուկ (bazuk) 

Pezevenk (pimp) from  բոզավագ (bozavag, “whoremaster, pimp”) x

 Haç (cross) from խաչ (khach, “cross”)

Çap (diameter or (military) caliber) from չափ (chap, “size”).

Şen (happy, cheerful) from շեն (shen,“inhabited, in good state“)

Lavaş from լավաշ (lavash) 

Mor (purple) from մոր (mor, “raspberry or blackberry“)

Moruk (slang for an old man) from մորուք (morukʿ, “beard”)

Topik (a meze made of tahini, chickpea, potato and onion) from թոփիկ (topik)

Hello! - Silav!

Good morning! - Beyanî baş!

Good night! - Şev baş!

Good day! - Roj baş!

Welcome! - Bi xêr hatî (to greet someone)

How are you? - Çawa yî?

I’m fine, thanks! - Ez baş im, sipas!

And you? - Û tu?

Good. - Baş im.

Thank you (very much)! - (Gelek) sipas!

You’re welcome (for “thank you”) - Sipas xweş!

I missed you so much! - Min gelek bêriya te kir!

I haven’t had much luck. 

General

Memrise courses 

Kurdish Academy of Language

Language Info

Digital Library

Kurmancî Kurdish

Kurmancî Grammar

Kurmancî Course Book

Kurmancî Vocabulary

Learn Kurmanji

Soranî Kurdish

Sorani Kurdish Central

Sorani Kurdish Grammar

Basic phrases

Hi good people! Hope you’re having a good day. 

You might be thinking “I thought I knew Turkish alphabet wtf are these?”. Don’t worry, you do know Turkish alphabet. These letters you see above are not officially from our alphabet, and you will not see a native using these letters when writing things (MOSTLY) (because again, these do not belong to our alphabet) yet they are highly effective in our language in terms of pronounciation and sometimes meaning. Let’s look at them one by one:

â: indicates that the consonant before ‘â’ is palatalized and/or you pronounce the 'a’ longer. (very similar to the pronounciation of “cube” in English)

-hala (aunt) is pronounced just the way you write it, ha-la. -hâlâ (still) is pronounced haa-laa, “a” is pronounced longer and ‘h’ and ‘l’ are palatalized (do not forget how you read ‘cube’) -kar (snow) is pronounced just the way you write it, kar. -kâr (profit) â k is palatalized.

There’s a funny example on why is this important in terms of meaning:

-Kârımı iş ortağımla paylaşırım. (I share my profit with my business partner.) -Karımı iş ortağımla paylaşırım. (I share my snow with my business partner.) -(also Karım = my wife) Karımı iş ortağımla paylaşırım. (I share my wife with my business partner.)

ê: indicates that you pronounce the ‘e’ longer.

-mêmur (government employee, officer) = mee-mur -têlif (copyright) = tee-lif

î: indicates that you pronounce the ‘i’ longer.

-siyasî (political) si-ya-sii -hayatî (vital) ha-ya-tii

ô: indicates that ‘o’ is longer and softer.

-gôl (goal) -rôl (role) 

û: indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant and you pronounce the ‘u’ longer.

-sükûnet (quiteness) is pronounced sü-kuu-net (sycuːˈnet: cu as in cube)

Again, these letters are not officially a part of Turkish alphabet but if you see one of these used while writing Turkish, that’s not a typo or done for aestethics. It’s done for meaning or pronounciation purposes.

Hello, everyone! Earlier we had another lesson related to the case system with a focus on location. This week, we are going to learn what cases are more in depth.

Cases concern and change nouns, not verbs. Glossary of Linguistics Terms defines a case as “a grammatical category determined by the syntactic or semantic function of a noun or pronoun.” But that just complicated the matters. So in layman’s terms, we can say that a case changes or inflects (changes) a noun or pronoun because of the noun’s function or place in a sentence. If none of the languages you speak has cases and it is your first encounter with such a concept, that might sound confusing, but don’t worry! Examples exist for a reason.

So let’s take the word “ev” (house).

If we use this as a subject like in the sentence “The house is big.”, we stick to the form we see in the dictionary and hear being said as an individual word. It is the version that exists in the minds of native speakers without an assigned function. And a sentence where this form is used would have the word as a noun as in “Ev çöküyor.” (The house is collapsing.)

However if the same word were used as an object like in “I’m buying the house.”, the word “ev” changes form and turns into “evi” as the sentence “Evi satın alıyorum.” shows.

So now that we know what a case is, we can talk about cases in Turkish. In Turkish, we have five cases (some books may say more but that’s what every native speaker learns at school) and only nouns are inflected by the cases (in contrast to other languages which inflect adjectives and determines as well e.g. German, Slavic languages, Armenian, Greek etc.)

5 Turkish cases are as follows:

Nominative (no suffix - the noun form)

Accusative (-i, - ı, - u, - ü, - yi, -yı,  yu, -yü suffixes - the direct object form)

Dative (-a, - e, - ya, - ye suffixes - the indirect object form)

Locative (-de, -da, -te, -ta - the location and time form)

Ablative (-den, -dan, -ten, -tan - the departure or source form)

Today we will be learning the ones in bold.

THE NOMINATIVE CASE (İSMİN YALIN HALİ)

You already know one of these cases as it is the nominative or as we call in Turkish “ismin yalın hali” (the plain version of the noun). It is the uninflected version of the noun, and every word you learn is in this case. Examples are as follows: kapı (door), portakal (orange), sevgi (love), uyku (sleep) etc.

The nominative is used when the noun is a subject. Çocuk kapıyı açıyor.  (The child is opening the door.)

When it is used as a nominal predicate.This sounds different but it just means, instead of a verb a noun is used because Turkish doesn’t use the verb “to be”. Onun kızı öğretmen.  (Her/his daughter is a teacher.)

When the object of the sentence is indefinite. (In English, to serve the same purpose “some” or “a” is used.) Bana kitap veriyor. (She/he is giving me a/some book.) If we used a case here, it would mean we are talking about a specific book, not a random one.

Before some postpositions gibi (like), için(for), ile (with), kadar (as… as) ev gibi (like a house), ev için (for the house), ev ile (with the house), ev kadar (as much as the house)          However I specifically recommend that you don’t try to memorize these postpositions as long as the language you speak doesn’t use a different case for them, they should appear pretty natural in their nominative form for speakers of languages without cases.

THE LOCATIVE CASE (İSMİN BULUNMA HALİ)

You know this case and that it is used to indicate location from Lesson 5 as well. If you don’t remember or want to check it you can click the link.The name of this case makes sense both in English and Turkish,  because its function is already specified in the name. Locative is all about locations, in Turkish we call it “the state of being found/present of the noun” (which sounds just super duper weird in English)

This case expresses location in time and space. And is formed by adding “-de”, “-da”, “-te”, “-ta” to the noun in accordance with the vowel harmony and “consonant hardening” ( if a word ends in f, s, t, k, ç, ş, h, p instead of “-de”, - “da” used their t counterparts.) How it conforms to these rules is explained in Lesson 5.

Kapıda - at the door

Evde - at home

Koltukta - on the couch/sofa

Üçte - at three

First example sentences:

Aynı şehirde yaşıyoruz. (We live in the same city.)

Şehir - the city şehirde - in the city

Bu günlerde her şey çok pahalı. (Everything is too expensive these days.)

Bu günler - these days

However we still use the locative because we are talking about the location in time. If we used it in the nominative it would be a subject like in the sentence “These days are hot.”

Also some verbs require the locative case but this isn’t an arbitrary requirement, they require the locative because these verbs carry meanings related to location or time.

These are oturmak (to sit), durmak (stop),yaşamak (to live), bulunmak (to be found/present), kalmak (to stay)

İstanbul'da yaşıyorum. (I live in Istanbul.)

Koltukta oturuyor. (She/he sits on the sofa.)

Arkadaşında kalıyor. [She/he is staying at her/his friend’s (place).]

Recently I’ve been watching and obsessing over Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl) and Kösem - two amazing Turkish series about Ottoman Sultans - and I’ve learned a lot of words and phrases just by listening!

Please note that I’m not a native speaker so any corrections would be appreciated!

Exclamatory 

affet beni! – forgive me!

beni yalnız bırak! – leave me alone!

bırak beni! – let me go!

çabuk! – quickly!

çıkabilirsin! – you may leave!

elbette! – of course!

gel benimle! – come with me!

git buradan! – go away!

hadi! – come on!

korkma! – don’t be afraid!

merak etme! – don’t worry!

ne olur! – please! (begging)

olmaz! – no way!

sakin ol! – calm down!

sus! – shut up!

söyle! – spit it out!

yalan! – it’s a lie!

yardım edin! – help me!

yasak! – it’s forbidden! 

yeter (artık)! – that’s enough!

Questions

anladın mı? – do you understand?

bu kim? – who’s this?

bu ne? – what’s this?

doğru mu? – is it true?

iyi misin? – are you okay?

hayırdır? – what is it?

kimse var mı? – is anybody there?

ne diyorsun? – what are you saying?

ne oldu? – what happened? 

ne var? – what’s the matter?

öyle mi? – is that so?

sana ne? – what’s it to you? 

tamam mı? – alright?

yalan mı? – is it a lie?

Misc.

afiyet olsun – bon appetit

âlâ – great, good

buyrun – here you go / are

çok şükür – thank god

çok yaşa! – bless you!

doğru – it’s true

hiç sanmıyorum – I don’t think so

inşallah – “god willing,” used to express hopes for future events

maşallah – used to express appreciation, joy, praise, or thankfulness for an event or person 

sağol – thanks