Turkish phrasebook

Turkish (Türkçe) is the most widely-spoken of the Turkic languages and is the official language of the Republic of Turkey - as well as being the most useful language in Turkish-ruled northern Cyprus. Outside of Turkey itself, knowledge of Turkish is helpful in several neighbouring countries including Azerbaijan. While the Central Asian "stans" speak Turkic languages, the similarities between Kazakh and Turkish (for example) are only very rudimentary. Turkish is a fairly difficult language to learn and speak, due to its complicated, mathematical vowel-harmonied grammar.

Grammar

Unlike many languages, Turkish forms words by a process known as "agglutination", where prefixes and suffixes are attached to words to mark different parts of speech and so on. Thus, an English phrase such as "I am an Australian" is rendered in Turkish with the one word "Avustralyaliyim - Avustralya-li-y-im".

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