Town, Region and Country

The letter that appears from nowhere

You already know that Turkish glues its endings onto the back of a word, and that vowel harmony decides which vowel the ending uses. Here is the piece nobody told you. Sometimes a y turns up between the word and the ending, and it was not in either of them. It is not a mistake and it is not random: it is Turkish solving a problem, and once you see the problem the y stops being a surprise.

Where you live

Five words to learn. park you can already read, so it is here only to demonstrate the rule.

Match each word to its meaning

Why the y is there

To say you are going to a place, Turkish adds -e or -a on the end. Vowel harmony picks which one, exactly as you already know. After a consonant, it just attaches: köy gives köye - to the village. park gives parka - to the park. After a vowel, two vowels would crash together. kasaba plus -a would give "kasabaa", which Turkish will not say. So it slips a y in between: kasaba gives kasabaya. ülke gives ülkeye. cadde gives caddeye. That y is the buffer. It carries no meaning at all; it is there purely to keep the two vowels apart. Once you know that, you can predict it rather than memorising each word.

How do you say "to the town"?

kasaba is town. Which form means "to the town"?

• kasabaya
• kasabaa
• kasabae
• kasabada

The rule

To say you are going to a place, Turkish adds an ending. After a consonant it attaches directly, so köy becomes _____. But after a vowel the two vowels would _____, so Turkish slips a _____ in between, and kasaba becomes _____. Which of -e or -a you use is decided by _____, which you already know.

Find the buffer

Here are three Turkish words, all meaning "to" somewhere. Tap the one where a y has been slipped in to keep two vowels apart.

• köye
• ülkeye
• parka

Order them by size

Put these four places in order, smallest first.

• cadde - street
• köy - village
• kasaba - town
• ülke - country

Which are correctly formed?

Select the TWO that are built correctly.

• caddeye, for "to the street"
• köye, for "to the village"
• ülkee, for "to the country"
• köyye, for "to the village"

Use it

Three moments where the buffer decides what you write.

• You want to say you are going to the garden. bahçe ends in a vowel. What do you write?
• A word ends in a consonant and you are about to add the ending. Do you need the buffer?
• You want to write "to the city", and şehir is the word for city.

Turkish closes the sentence with the verb

The place words become sentences once you add var (there is) or a verb at the end. Turkish never puts the verb in the middle the way English does: - Şehirde bir bahçe var = "there is a garden in the city". şehir takes the -de ending you have been practising, and var closes the sentence. Turkish has no word for "the", so bir simply means "a". - Ben köyde oturuyorum = "I live in the village". Ben (I), then where, then the verb last. köy takes -de for the same reason as şehirde.

Turkish puts the verb at the end

Turkish puts the verb at the end. Which of these says "there is a garden in the city"?

• Şehirde bir bahçe var
• Var şehirde bir bahçe
• Şehir bir bahçe var
• Ben köyde oturuyorum

Two endings, one difference

The only thing that changes is the last letter of the word you started with.

Village, town and country in Turkish

A village is _____ and a town is _____. A country is _____ and a street is _____. And to say you are going to one of them, add -e or -a, slipping a _____ in first if the word ends in a vowel.

Sıra sende

Write a few sentences in Turkish about where you live and where you go. Use the words from this module.

• Say whether you live in a köy, a kasaba or a şehir
• Say where you go at the weekend, using the -e or -a ending at least twice
• Include one word that ends in a vowel, so the buffer y appears
• Include one word that ends in a consonant, so it does not