Turkish Vocabulary

Turkish has a rich vocabulary that can be extremely fun to learn. We group Turkish words and phrases into themed lists to make it easier to learn and memorize them. Combining a vocabulary list with example sentences, flash card memorization practices, and relevant dialogues is the best way to learn new words.

Turkish Vocabulary History

Modern Turkish primarily contains Turkic words, which means it shares a lot in common with related Turkic languages, especially those from the Oghuz group such as Azerbaijani and Turkmen. The language also shares agglutination and vowel harmony, both of which can change the spelling sound, and length of words.

Agglutination can make memorizing Turkish vocabulary difficult for foreigners since it can be hard to recognize altered words. However, we hope to provide enough examples with each vocabulary collection so that the patterns of suffixes begin to make sense.

Turkish Loanwords

Like most languages, Turkish is filled with borrowed words from other languages, mostly Arabic, Persian, and French. Since the founding of the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 and the many language reforms that accompanied it, modern Turkish has far fewer loanwords than Ottoman  Turkish.

However, there are still tons of borrowed vocabulary, which means that anyone who already knows these other languages will have an easier time learning Turkish vocabulary.

Cognates: Friends Between Two Languages

As we recommend in these 15 steps for learning Turkish quickly, cognates can be an incredibly efficient way to learn new vocabulary. A cognate is a word that looks and sounds similar between two languages.

The pronunciation may or may not be the same, however, the similar spelling and look mean that memorization is particularly easy. For example, consider the following cognates between Turkish and English:

  • Akademi = academy
  • Bisiklet = bicycle
  • Balkon = balcony
  • Bot = boat

There are hundreds of words like these, making this a fantastic strategy to boost your vocabulary when learning a new language.

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