Why Turkish should be your next language to learn
1. It’s impressive.
Few people learn Turkish as an additional language. As a result, native Turkish speakers praise you for your efforts. “Your Turkish is amazing!” they will say. “Turkish is so difficult!” they will say. People who do not speak Turkish will also be impressed, as they assume it is impossibly complicated. Never mind that Turkish is actually a wonderfully easy language to learn, as I will explain.
2. It’s phonetic.
Unlike English, Turkish has an alphabet of letters that are always pronounced in the same way.
a is always pronounced as ‘ah’
e is always pronounced as ‘eh’
Compare this to English in which the letter a can be pronounced as ‘ey’ (game), ‘ah’ (wander), or ‘ae’ (man), and the letter e can be pronounced as ‘i’ (women), ‘uh’ (avenue), ‘e’ (hen), or nothing (longed).
Furthermore, thanks to a language reform in 1928, Turkish is written in Latin script—same as English—so you can learn to read Turkish in about five minutes. Only a few letters will be new to you, such as ü and ö, and only a few letters will be pronounced in a different way, such as r, which is more like a Spanish ‘r’, with the tongue flicking the top of the mouth.
3. It’s easy to remember.
The words are generally short and memorable.
Su = water
Ay = month/moon
Kolay = easy
Güzel = beautiful
4. It has no masculine or feminine forms.
Unlike French, Spanish, Arabic, and countless other languages, Turkish assigns no gender to its nouns.
No le su or la su. Just su (the water)
No le ay or la ay. Just ay (the moon).
5. It doesn’t even differentiate between ‘he’ and ‘she’.
He = o
She = o
It = o
By now you’re probably convinced to jump on board with this language (you already know 7 words!), but if not, hang tight for 5 more reasons in the next installment of Reasons to Love Turkish.
