Lonely Planet Turkish Phrasebook

Two-way dictionary and Phrasebook

Other Learn to Speak Turkish Audio and Books click here

Lonely Planet Turkish Phrasebook - Paperback

Paperback - 259pp

It can trace its roots back to the 8th century BC, and transformed itself from a nomad's tongue to an ornate diplomatic language; but thanks to an overhaul from Atatürk, it's surprisingly simple to learn - in fact, a delight!

• Two-way dictionary
• Guide to pronunciation and phrase-building
• Fail-safe small talk
• Practicalities - how to catch a bus or book a room

About the Turkish Language

Turkish can be a language spoken by 65-73 million people worldwide, that makes it a single of the commonly spoken belonging to the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey, with smaller communities in Cyprus, Bulgaria, Greece, and Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.

The roots belonging to the language tend to be traced to Central Asia, when using the first written records dating back to nearly 1,200 years. In direction of west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish-the immediate precursor of today's Turkish-spread due to the fact Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, among Atatürk's Reforms noisy several years of the new Turkish Republic, the Ottoman script was replaced that has a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the french language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords solely have native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.

The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. Many of the word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish consists of a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms might be for the people as being a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.

Turkic languages and Altaic languages

Turkish is known as the member associated with the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of Turkic language speakers are Turkish speakers. The characteristic popular features of Turkish, for example , vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal while in the Turkic family and the Altaic languages.There can be described as high higher level of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, and Gagauz.

History

The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are living in modern Mongolia. The Bugut inscriptions written in to the Sogdian alphabet while in the First Göktürk Khanate are dated to the second half of the 6th century. The 2 main major monumental Orkhon inscriptions, erected in honour associated with the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back a long time between 732 and 735, constitute one other serious early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists on the inside wider small area around the Orkhon Valley between 1889-93, it became established that your particular language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which been specifically called "Turkic runes" or "runiform" being a result of an external being similar to the Germanic runic alphabets.

Aided by the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6th-11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs associated with the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkic-the direct ancestor of today's Turkish language-into Anatolia by means of the 11th century. Also during the 11th century, an early linguist belonging to the Turkic languages, Mahmud originating from a Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers involved in the Compendium belonging to the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk).

Lonely Planet Turkish Phrasebook - Paperback