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Language Difficulty | ||
Tags: Turkish | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6891 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 9 of 22 10 November 2006 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
I quite agree, although I have not studied Turkish in depth. I think the main difficulties with Turkish are the agglutinative qualities of the language (which is entirely foreign to anyone who lacks experience with agglutinating languages) and the relative lack of transparency in vocabulary for those who have only studied the major European languages. Arguably, Turkish would be a little easier for those who have an understanding of how agglutinating languages 'work' (such as Swahili or any of the other Turkic languages) and vocabulary would be a little more transparent to those with a background in Arabic or even Persian. Other than that, I don't believe that Turkish should be classed as any harder than French as its verb system is VERY regular and logical (is it true that Turkish only has one irregular verb?). Its pronunciation is also fairly phonetic, when compared with the nasal vowels and vowel combinations of French, and the whole concept of vowel harmony is not all that hard to learn. At the end of the day, it's all relative. It depends on what your linguistic background is, whether you have an interest in the language and whether you're willing to cope with the differences and difficulties that a different language family has to offer. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rcottere Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 6607 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian Studies: Arabic (Written), Portuguese, French, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Persian, Kurdish, Swedish | Message 10 of 22 10 November 2006 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Turkish has many irregular verbs...that is some silly statistic from wikipedia. The present stem cannot be derived from the infinitive. This is a small problem but still one none the less. The bottom line is it takes people longer to learn Turkish. It takes twice as long for someone to reach the next proficiency level in Turkish as it does in French. The DLI has posted that on its website. If there is a native english speaker who is FLUENT in both French and Turkish I would love to hear a comment from him. I have a friend who spoke French at home and learned Turkish and believes that French is much harder. Please remember that difficulty is based on your native language, which is English in this case. French and English share an enormous amount of vocabulary before of the Normans; English and Turkish share relatively few words. English grammar is very close to French for the most part. They are both SVO and lack nominal inflection. They both form plurals with s. Turkish nominal inflection operates on different principles than ANY indo-european language and it is SOV. Turkish also has interesting agreement rules because nouns and verbs don't have to always agree in gender and number, unlike French.
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 11 of 22 11 November 2006 at 6:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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| rcottere Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 6607 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian Studies: Arabic (Written), Portuguese, French, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Persian, Kurdish, Swedish | Message 12 of 22 11 November 2006 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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http://zaicheke.unilang.org/PDF/Turkish%20Resources/TurkishV erbs.pdf
That is a PDF showing the infinitive versus the Aorist stem. It is not always predictable. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 13 of 22 11 November 2006 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for the link. Okay, about a dozen verbs have 'i' instead of 'e' in the aorist. In all the other tenses they're regular and there are no other irregularities that I know of (I don't consider the t->d, p->b, etc. shifts irregular).
Compared to all other languages I have some competence in, this is nothing. Edited by Marc Frisch on 11 November 2006 at 4:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5153 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes | Message 14 of 22 18 October 2010 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My native language is Turkish. It is true that the verb conjugation is regular though there are lots of tenses. Just see below.
To go = Gitmek I go = Giderim You go = Gidersin He goes = Gider We go = Gideriz You go = Gidersiniz They go = Giderler I don’t go = Gitmem Do I go? = Gider miyim? Don’t I go? = Gitmez miyim? I am still not sure whether the verb conjugation is easy as there are lots of changes in the negative or interrogative forms. On the other hand the suffixes of the cases are added even to the verbs. I know that he went = Gittiğini biliyorum. I believe that he went = Gittiğine inanırım. I am sure that he went = Gittiğinden eminim. I am aware that he went = Gittiğinin farkındayım. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 15 of 22 19 October 2010 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is the way sentences are formed in Turkish, illustrated in the last four lines of the quoted message, that is the real difficulty in mastering Turkish, if your L1 is Indo-European. You have to get rid of the IE tendency to form relative clauses. I am well along with Turkish, know thousands of words etc. but this kind of thing can still trip me up. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 16 of 22 19 October 2010 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
That doesn't sound right at all. When you look at a Russian word you have no idea which syllable to stress. Stress is random in Russian. As it is not written down you cannot read a Russian word correctly if you do not know it already. If you already know the word then yes you will be able to read it the first time you see it. Russian is like English in this regard. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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