Basics of Turkish Grammar

Welcome to an exploration of Turkish grammar!

Turkish is a rather challenging language to study! This is a study guide I put together for my own use, to serve as what I hope is a reasonably complete and organized refresher or review material. In the interest of keeping this practical, I have made some simplifications and shortcuts. Treat this as a tool, not an authoritative grammar guide! You really want to get a good textbook.

The best book is Geoffrey L. Lewis' excellent Turkish Grammar. My attempt in these pages is to put together a heavily compressed summary of his textbook.

Turkish is a very challenging language for a native speaker of English or other Indo-European languages. The Indo-European languages are very similar to each other, and England was invaded first by the Anglo-Saxons and then by the French, both of whom brought their languages. Turkish is completely different. It is in the Turkic family, so it is similar to languages such as Azeri, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh, and many others.