[spanishsecondlanguage]

Test your listening proficiency

Here’s another test from LanguageTrainers.com, which tests elementary and intermediate listening levels in the following languages:

Arabic

Chinese

Danish

Dutch

English

French

German

Greek

Hebrew

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Norwegian

Portuguese

Russian

Spanish (European)

Spanish

Swedish

Turkish

They also have a written, multiple choice test available here, which I talk about here.

[educatedmillenials]

Languages in Turkish

I just saw @unapologeticallysunev ’s “Languages in Italian” post inspired by  @malteseboy ‘s “Languages in Maltese” vocab list (neither of which I am able to link, thanks Opera for being a functional browser) and decided to make one in Turkish 

Before I start: Turkish loves its suffixes! You’ll have a very easy time if you get how we tag suffixes onto roots to make new words (and how we use vowel and consonant agreements for picking the right suffixes). For languages, the suffixes we use are ca/ce or ça/çe, depending on the vowels and consonants in the root word (which is often the nationality name) 

Another fun fact: in English and many other popular European languages the word for a language and a person’s nationality seem to be the same, e.g. Japanese girl speaks Japanese, Maltese boy (hehe) speaks Maltese type thing. In Turkish we don’t do that – to describe nationalities you gotta learn a whole other set of suffixes! 

With that disclaimer (?), here we go:

Arnavutça – Albanian 

Arapça – Arabic 

Baskça (or Bask dili) – Basque 

Belarusça – Belarusian 

Boşnakça – Bosnian

Bulgarca – Bulgarian

Çekçe – Czech 

Çince – Chinese

Danca (or Danimarka dili) – Danish

Ermenice – Armenian

Estonca (or Estonya dili) – Estonian

Fince – Finnish

Flemenkçe – Dutch

Farsça – Farsi/Persian

Fransızca – French 

Gallerce (or Galler dili) – Welsch

Gürcü (or Gürcü dili) – Georgian 

Hırvatça – Croatian 

Hintçe – Hindi 

İbranice – Hebrew

İngilizce – English

İspanyolca – Spanish

İsveçce – Swedish

İtalyanca – Italian

İzlandaca – Icelandic 

Japonca – Japanese

Korece – Korean

Kürtçe – Kurdish

Latince – Latin

Latviaca – Latvian

Lehçe – Polish

Litvanca – Lithuanian

Macarca – Hungarian

Maltaca – Maltese 

Makedonca – Macedonian

Norveç dili – Norwegian

Portekizce – Portugese 

Romanca – Romanian

Roma dili – Romanes (Roma Language) 

Sırpça – Serbian

Swahili dili – Swahili

Tayca – Thai

Türkçe – Turkish

Ukraynaca – Ukranian

Vietnamca – Vietnamese

Yunanca – Greek

Zulu – Zulu

[aegean-okra]

Turkish proverb

Bir fincan kahvenin 40 yıl hatırı vardır. English: One cup of coffee remains in memories for 40 years.

Turkish coffee is not merely a beverage that you have in the midst of a busy day to have your daily caffeine fix. It is a way of life for the Turkish people and quite central to their social, political and religious customs. 

[wordsnquotes]

nazlanmak

(verb) An untranslatable Turkish word, nazlanmak describes the act of pretending hesitation or indifference when one is, in reality, enthusiastic or willing; it’s saying no when you’re dying to say yes. (via wordsnquotes)

[nazarrr]

Sound like a native in Turkish

Hallettim - I solved it/that 

Etekleri zil çaldı - To be thrilled 

Cidden mi? - Seriously/really? 

Aman Allahım - Oh dear 

Müthiş bir başarıydı - This was a great success 

Aklımı kaçaracağım - I’m losing it 

Mahvettim - I messed up 

Her şey kontrol altında - Everything’s under control 

Söyleyecek sözüm yok - I have no words to say 

Durum bundan ibaret - That’s just the way it is 

Çocuk oyuncağı - It’s a piece of cake

Beş parasız kalmak - To have no money

Dilini yutmak - To swallow his/her tongue

Parmaklarını yemek - To eat your fingers

On parmağında on marifet olmak - To be very talented

Su gibi akıp gitmek - To fly by (time)

[lingsua]

First 300 Words/Expressions in Turkish

This is the Turkish version of funwithlanguages’ list containing 300 words that can help you express yourself with a very litttle vocabulary knowledge. Let me know if you have any corrections/questions! :)

First Verbs

Note: -mek/-mak is the infinitive suffix

1.     be: olmak

2.     there is: var

3.     have: sahip olmak

4.     do: yapmak

5.     go: gitmek

6.     want: istemek

7.     can: -ebilmek/-abilmek

8.     need: ihtiyacı olmak

9.     think: düşünmek

10. know: bilmek

11. say: söylemek

12. like: sevmek

13. speak: konuşmak

14. learn: öğrenmek

15. understand: anlamak

Conjunctions

1.     that (as in “I think that…” or “the woman that…”): there’s no similar conjuction in Turkish

2.     and: ve

3.     or: ya da/veya

4.     but: ama

5.     because: çünkü

6.     though: -e rağmen

7.     so (meaning “therefore”; e.g. “I wanted it, so I bought it”): için

8.     if: eğer

Prepositions

1.     of: -ın, -in, -un, -ün (genitive)

2.     to: -a,-e (dative)

3.     from: -dan, -den (ablative)

4.     in: -da, -de (locative)

5.     at (a place): -da, -de (locative)

6.     at (a time): -da, -de

7.     with: ile birlikte

8.     about: yaklaşık (as in ‘about four’) yakınında (as in ‘about there’)

9.     like (meaning “similar to”): benzer

10. for (warning, this one has several meanings that you need to take care of): ‘için’ covers many of them

11. before (also as a conjunction): önce

12. after (also as a conjunction): sonra

13. during: sırasında

Keep reading

[polyglot-ed-deactivated20181101]

Can you explain the suffix -işir- / -üşür- etc. as in yazışırız or görüşürüz in Turkish?

So… Actually, there are two suffixes here (oh the beauty of agglutinative languages!), and not just -işir- / -üşür- as their own suffixes.

First, we have the -Iş- suffix (I write , a capital , here to represent a high/close vowel that can take the following forms , <ı>, , <ü>). The -Iş- suffix marks the reciprocal (or cooperative) mood. Thus, these stems with this suffix would give us the following verbs: yazışmak “to correspond” (”to write one another”) and görüşmek “to see one another.” You can read more about the use of this suffix here.

The -Ir- suffix that we see follow, isn’t really a suffix that changes meaning, but rather tense. The -Ir- suffix marks the aorist tense in Turkish (specifically for multi-syllabic verbs). This tense has a lot of names: aorist, simple present, habitual present, etc. In Turkish it’s called “geniş zaman” (the “wide tense”). You can read more about the geniş zaman here.

So, if we were to take these verbs apart (to their smallest parts), this is what we have:yazışırız: yaz- root “write” -ış- reciprocal/cooperative mood -ır- aorist tense -ız 1st Pl markerThus we can translate it as “we correspond; we write to one another; we’ll write to each other”.

görüşürüz: gör- root “see” -üş- reciprocal/cooperative mood -ür- aorist tense -üz 1st Pl markerThus we can translate it was “we (regularly) see each other; we will see each other; Goodbye! (colloquially)”

As far as my understanding of Turkish goes, this is how I would interpret these verbs (though I am not a native or fluent speaker of Turkish and I am human). However, I hope this helps! And let me know if you have any more questions :D

[deutschistliebe]

Turkish "sa/se" Suffix

In Turkish one can use the trigger words “eğer” or “şayet” meaning if, lest or unless to show when a sentence is conditional but they are not required.

The “if” suffix in Turkish is “sa/se” which is an e-type suffix. One simple example would be “If there is/are” - “Varsa” and the negative equivalent “If there isn’t/aren’t” - “Yoksa”. This conditional tense is formed by adding (y)se or (y)sa to the end of the tense marker plus the personal ending.

The endings for each pronoun are:

-(y)sem/sam

-(y)sen/san

-(y)se/sa

-(y)sek/sak

-(y)seniz/sanız

-(y)seler/salar

*The two past tense forms written below always take a “y” also regardless of two vowels being next to each other.

For example:

Gelsem - If I were to come (If I came). Gel - come + sem - If I

Gelirsen - If you (usually) come. Gelir - usually come + sen - If you

Geliyorsanız - If you all are coming. Geliyor - coming + sanız - If you all

Geldiysek - If we came. Geldi - came + sek - If we

Gelseydiler* - If only they had come.

Gelecekse - If he, she, it (will) come. Gelecek - will come + se - If he, she, it

*This one switches its position.

To make the expression negative you simply add me or ma after the verb stem.

Gelmesem - If I were not to come

Gelmeyeceksen - If you will not come

Gelmezse - If he, she, it doesn’t come

Gelmiyorlar - If they aren’t coming

Gelmeseydik - If only we had not come

Gelmediyseniz - If you all didn’t come.

[linguistisch]

Sooo, if you’re used to languages like English, German, Spanish, Italian, or say Swedish, you might think saying “to have” is a simple little thing. You maybe just plop a verb in there, conjugate the verb, and maybe make sure the case is right or something. In Turkish it isn’t exactly more complicated, just different.

So how does it work?

It’s pretty simple. Rather than saying “I have the book”, you can simply say “My book exists”. It’s not hard.

Possession

To be able to do this, you first need to know possession. (being able to say “my book”)

The first part of this is the possessive (genitive) pronouns - benim = my senin = your onun = his/her/its bizim = our sizin = your (formal/plural) onların = their

So you can optionally add these before the noun to make them possessive. It’s not necessary, as there is a suffix to add. Remember vowel harmony and consonant mutations! Here are the suffixes: benim …im senin …in onun …(s)i bizim …imiz sizin …iniz onların …isi

Examples  cat = kedi    my cat = (benim) kedim    your cat = (senin) kedin    his/her/its cat = (onun) kedisi    our cat = (bizim) kedimiz    y’alls cat = (sizin) kediniz    their cat = onların kedisi  book = kitap    my book = (benim) kitabım    your book = (senin) kitabın    his/her/its book = (onun) kitabı    our book = (bizim) kitabımız    y’alls book = (sizin) kitabınız    their book = onların kitabı

Exists

Well for this you just need two words! They are var and yok. Just exists and doesn’t exist.

Putting it together I have a dog. = (benim) Köpeğim var. We do not have a house. = (bizim) Evimiz yok. You have a pen. = (senin) Kalemin var.

So that’s basically it! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. If I have made any typos or mistakes please tell me.

[deutschistliebe]

The Past Continuous Tense

In Turkish there is a separate past tense that is called the Past Continuous Tense. This tense serves the exact same purpose as the Present Continuous except that it is simply in the past instead.

To form the Past Continuous Tense all you have to do is form the Present Continuous by adding “iyor” and then add the normal past tense ending “di (ti)”.

Ex: Gelmek - Geliyor - Geliyordum  I was coming

      Anlatmak - Anlatıyor - Anlatıyordunuz  You all were telling

      Yaşamak - Yaşıyor - Yaşıyorduk  We were living

      Gitmek - Gidiyor - Gidiyordun  You were going

      Vermek - Veriyor - Veriyordular/lardı  They were giving

      Öpmek - Öpüyor - Öpüyordu  He, She, It was kissing

To form the negative just add “me or "ma” to “iyor” like it is usually done in the present tense.

Ex: Sevmek - Sevmiyor - Sevmiyordum  I wasn’t loving/liking

      Koşmak - Koşmıyor - Koşmıyorduk  We weren’t running

As you can see this tense is very easy and straight-forward. İyi eğlenceler! :D