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Difficulty of Turkish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5584 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 1 of 49 17 December 2009 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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How difficult would it be for me to learn Turkish?
I have been told that it is an "easy language"? My friend holds the opinion that 6 months living there is enough for attaining fluency. However, I dont believe what he says. I dont believe it is an easy language. Being a non-indoeuropean language with few traits related to my own language, it is probably going to be considerably harder to learn than the likes of French (which my friends considers a difficult language), Spanish and German. On the other hand, I was once told it is grammatically difficult to the extent that it is on par with, or pretty close to Hungarian in terms of complexity. One person even told me that it surpasses Hungarian. How difficult do you think this language is? Specifically for me, would knowledge of Japanese and Korean grammar serve as a help to grasp its grammar? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5698 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 49 17 December 2009 at 11:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I can't give you a grade of difficulty, I'm only beginning to learn like you.
The difficulty seems to me that almost all words are new. The grammar seems less difficult than many other languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6263 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 3 of 49 17 December 2009 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Every word is basically new (well, at least for a japanese native speaker, I who speak Bosnian as my first language found many similiar if not identical words) although the grammar is awesome, meaning that the irregularities are almost non existant. Still, IMHO, it has a lot of difficult grammar concepts to master, you can express really a lot of niances (is there such a word in English?) with different constructs... for an example you say things that happened that you personally witnessed with one construct, and things you didn't personally witness with another one... that's just one example, there are many others. All in all, IMHO, completely affordable if you have enough willingness to make it, a big plus are words, especially verbs that are really really short... I'd say 70% of them aren't composed of more than 4 letters. They get long only because it is an agglutinative language.
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| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 6041 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 4 of 49 17 December 2009 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Do you mean nuance? I've just started with this language and so far it doesn't seem too bad compared to when I started out with russian. So good luck if you start it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zhiguli Senior Member Canada Joined 6442 days ago 176 posts - 221 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 5 of 49 18 December 2009 at 9:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
As someone who's studied Turkish and Hungarian, and is currently studying Japanese..
Not easy, but it's known for being very logical. Only one irregular verb, and very few irregularities in vowel harmony (usually related to foreign words). It'll take longer to master than Spanish or German but not as long as Japanese, the Latin-based alphabet being one of the big reasons. Turkish also has a decent amount of vocabulary from French and English, and it doesn't get mutilated to the extent it does in Japanese, so it won't be completely foreign.
Not sure about this. Turkish may have more suffixes and longer words but Hungarian has way more cases, exceptions, side-rules, etc. which make it more difficult overall.
Most likely. A Turk I know who's studied Japanese describes its grammar as "simplified Turkish" and so far I find it hard to disagree. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iltoen Newbie Germany Joined 5889 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Turkish* | Message 6 of 49 18 December 2009 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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i think what my confuse you is the word order as it confused me when i was learning German and English. The basic word order of turkish is subject object verb as you can know in English it is subject verb object.
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| Ertugrul Diglot Groupie Turkey Joined 5663 days ago 63 posts - 124 votes Speaks: Turkish*, English Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 49 18 December 2009 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Once i've checked a Japanese grammar book, i've called it "simplified Turkish". Yes, i agree to this expression.
On the other hand, personally Japanese is much more harder than Turkish because of the writing system. Since they share the same language origin (though both languages have changed in time) the rules, suffixes, cases and even some basic words look like. Turkish grammar is hard. However, it is very systematic and exceptions are too low. The most important thing which makes Turkish hard to learn is the loanwords. Some of Arabic and Persian loanwords are converted to Turkish and they follow the basic Turkish grammar rules. But most of the loanwords do not follow the rules. So they form the exceptions. The crucial part of Turkish is vowel harmony and transforms. If you master the vowel harmony you realize that Turkish is strictly organized and logical. Because Turkish had been spoken for many years without being written it addresses to ears although it is not very melodical :) Edited by Ertugrul on 18 December 2009 at 5:52pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5698 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 49 18 December 2009 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm pleased with your explanations, very interesting!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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