Lesson 1 — Merhaba! Greetings and introductions

1Merhaba! Hello, names and goodbyes

Let’s start with what you’ll need on day one. Play each line, say it out loud — and only open the translation when you’re genuinely stuck.

2The alphabet and vowel harmony: reading Turkish

Good news from minute one: you’ll be reading Turkish by the end of today. There are 29 Latin letters, and a word is said exactly the way it’s written — no traps, no transcription to learn. There’s no Q, W or X at all.

Tap any letter and you’ll hear it inside a real word. The letters English doesn’t have are marked out — among them ı without a dot and İ with one, which in Turkish are two different letters. Look at those properly once and the rest comes easily.

• ı — undotted vowel, an unrounded sound with no direct English equivalent
• ş — like English “sh”
• ç — like English “ch”
• ğ (yumuşak ge) — the laziest letter in the alphabet: barely a sound of its own, but it stretches the vowel in front of it
• c — like the “j” in English “jam”
• ö, ü — rounded vowels, similar to German ö/ü

Now the rule that runs through the whole language — vowel harmony. It sounds formal; the idea behind it is simple. The vowel in an ending adjusts to the last vowel of the word, because Turkish doesn’t like awkward combinations. The vowels split into two groups, and an ending always follows its own:

Consonants follow the same logic. Some voiceless consonants at the end of a word turn voiced when a vowel comes after them — simply because that’s easier to say.

3evler, kitaplar: the plural in -⁠lar/-⁠ler

Here is where vowel harmony starts paying you back. The plural is a single suffix with only two forms. Don’t memorise a table — say it out loud and your ear will pick the right one.

Look at the last vowel of each word and check it against the two groups above. Five words in, the rule stops being a rule and turns into a habit.

4I, you, this, who: the pronouns

These few words are already enough to talk about yourself, about the person in front of you, and about everyone else. Learn them today — you’ll need them in every lesson that follows.

Personal: ben, sen, o, biz, siz, onlar — I, you, he/she/it, we, you (pl.), they

Demonstrative: bu, şu, o — this (near), that (there), that (further away)

Interrogative: kim? ne? nerede? nasıl? — who? what? where? how?

5öğretmenim: “I’m a teacher” in one word

Now a proper Turkish trick: there is no verb “to be” in the present tense at all. Instead a small personal ending attaches to the word itself, and the sentence is finished. “I am a teacher” is literally “teacher-I”.

The vowel in these endings follows the word too, only it has four forms, not two: öğretmenim, but yorgunsunuz, Türk’üz, nasılsın. Why four? An ending asks the word’s last vowel two questions. The first you know already: is it back or front? The second: is it rounded — do your lips round on it? On o, u, ö and ü they do; on a, ı, e and i they don’t. Two questions split the vowels into four groups instead of two: a ı, o u, e i, ö ü.

Two forms or four depends on the ending, not the word. -⁠lar always has two, the personal endings always four, whatever word they join. The ending’s own vowel gives it away: an a or an e means two, and the first question is enough; an ı, i, u or ü means four, and it takes both.

In practice it’s three steps. Find the word’s last vowel — the last one: in öğretmen that’s e, not ö. Check how many forms the ending has. Pick: e is front and unrounded, so öğretmenim. In doktor the last vowel is o, back and rounded, so doktorum.

These pairs and foursomes come up so often that there’s a shorthand for them, used in grammar books and now and then here. The vowel that changes is written as a capital. A is a or e, the choice of two, so the plural is written -⁠lAr. I is ı, i, u or ü, the choice of four, so the “you” ending is -⁠sIn. The capital isn’t a typo or the start of a sentence; it means one thing, “this letter changes”.

You’ll meet this foursome again and again — half the endings in Turkish are built on it. Get to know it here and you’ll start recognising it everywhere.

7Dialogue: nice to meet you

Meet Ayşe and Can. You’ll be running into them in every lesson from here on. Listen to the whole conversation first — that way you hear the intonation rather than separate words. Then take it line by line and play it through again, this time with your own name.

8Reading

Your first Turkish text — and there is nothing in it you haven’t already met. Notice that the verb “to be” is still nowhere to be seen: the whole thing runs on the personal endings from section five.

Listen to it straight through first, without peeking at the translation. Then go line by line. Understanding every word first time isn’t the goal — recognising the familiar ones already counts as a win.

If that last line felt familiar, the culture section above did its job.

9The lesson’s new words

Everything new from the story, in the order it turned up. The greetings, pronouns and personal endings aren’t here: they stayed up in their own sections, as whole sets. The meanings are out in the open — this isn’t a test, it’s the page you glance at when you get stuck.

This lesson’s words as flashcards →

10Say it yourself

This time it’s the other way round: the cue is in English and the Turkish is hidden. Say the line out loud yourself, and only then press “Show answer”. Got it wrong? Great — that’s exactly how it sticks. Peek first and you’re learning to recognise, not to speak.

11Check yourself

Six quick exercises, and you'll see straight away what has stuck and what is worth replaying. Getting one wrong costs you nothing here — a wrong answer still shows you the right one.

12Homework

It’s completely fine if this doesn’t come out right first time — that’s rather the point of a first lesson. Go back to the sections above as often as you like: looking things up doesn’t count as cheating here.