Since the other Turkish thread cannot be maintained any longer, I've decided to start my own thread. I am learning Turkish myself since I will be going on a foreign exchange to Turkey beginning in August 2009.

So with that, I invite you to learn along with me if you want. I find that, by explaining stuff to other people, I learn it better myself, and it's always been that way for me in most of the things I do.

Before we get into the language, here are some facts about the country of Turkey.

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Full Name: the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti)
Population: 74.8mil (2007)
Capital: Ankara
Largest city: İstanbul
Official language: Turkish
Religions: Muslim 99.8% (mostly Sunni), other 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews)
Bordering countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria

Information from CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia


And some background on the language:

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Turkish (Türkçe) is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.

The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish—the immediate precursor of today's Turkish—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly-founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.

The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.

Information from Wikipedia


I will try to update this thread weekly, with lessons and exercises. Keep in mind, however, that I am learning this language as well, so this won't be a miracle thread.

So if you want to learn a bit of Turkish, keep track of this thread!