[Learn Turkish: Home] [Turkish: Beginners] [Table of Contents] [Questions/Comments]

[Blog: Our Turkey Life!] [Learn Turkish: Website Updates]

[Turkish: Website Search Engine] [Online Turkish Word Dictionary]

Identify this Famous Turk... Free updates for life! Jim and Peri's Commercial-free CD/Broadband Editions for Turkish Learning -- with triple ebook bonus! Learn Turkish with this Essential Suffixes Printed Book

Online Turkish Language Learning Tips, Tipoffs, Tricks, Traps, Techniques, Curiosities, and Oddities... The wrong and, the right ands Related Pages: Other 'Tips' pages Profiles of the Turkish People The Turkish Kinsey Report Gossipy Turkish Who's Who The Lying Eyes Club of Turkey Turkish Culture -- Two Turkish traditions we especially like Turkish Culture -- 4 things you shouldn't do in Turkey Turkish Culture -- 5 things you should do in Turkey Turkish Superstitions Turkish Circumcision Ceremonies Circumcision and what many Turks believe about Westerners Also: Turkish Movies - Best-Looking Bad Girl of the 1970s, Sevda Ferdağ Bad Girls of the 1970s Turkish Cinema, Aliye Rona Whole Earth Catalog of Turkish Movies Newsreaders Encyclopedic Dictionary, Index Movie Superhero Tarkan, historic and erotik Mature Dutch Bride in Turkey Mature British Bride in Turkey Mature Swedish Bride in Turkey We don't know about you, but early in our Turkish-language learning-experience, we got hooked on using the Turkish 've' to mean the English 'and' -- at almost every opportunity. Oh, yes...we do remember, vaguely, something in our text-books about the '-ıp' suffix and the stand-alone 'da' -- but why should we worry about them when 've' was available, and so easy for us to understand and use? Well, here's what one of our favorite Turkish-language advisors, Deniz Sarıöz, has to say on the subject: "Something I am really anal about is the pathological overuse of the word 've' in Turkish, which is considered a substitute for the English word 'and' -- due to the frequency of non-Turkish movies on TV with very very bad translations. More often than not, 'and' would translate better to Turkish as 'da' or 'de' or as '-ıp, -ip, -up, -üp' -- according to the rule of vowel harmony. For instance, in the example, 'Mektubu aç ve okuyalım.' (Open the letter and let's read it)... it would be so much more natural to replace the 've' in the sentence with 'da'." What Deniz (a native Türk) must mean is that it's so much more natural for native Türks to do that! (He hasn't thought about us poor non-natives -- who don't find much that's natural about the Turkish language at all.) But nevvvermind, his point is well taken. Because, we sure hear 'da' and 'ıp' (and 'ile', by the way) here in the Turkish streets (and in Turkish radio and television programming) a lot more than we hear 've'. So if you too would like a simple and effective way to sound better in Turkish, then cast out the unnatural-sounding 've' (wherever you can) -- in favor of the native-sounding 'da', 'ıp', and 'ile'... And remember... all of the 've' variations adhere strictly to the rule of vowel harmony as shown: 1) da, de 2) -ıp, -ip, -up, -üp 3) ile, -la, -le Remember, though, that 'ile', '-la', and '-le' are also commonly used as prepositions (postpositions) meaning 'with' or 'by'. So we need to be careful not to confuse 'ile', the conjunction, with 'ile', the preposition, as we translate... -- see examples three thru seven, below -- Examples: 1) Bütün o problemleri unut da zevkine bak. To translation 2) Her seferinde aynı şey, suçu kendi işler, kolayca kardeşinin üstüne yıkıp zeytinyağı gibi üste çıkardı. To translation 3) Doğu ile (or Doğuyla) Batı arasında uzlaşma var. (There is rapprochement between East and West.) 4) İzmir'e uçak ile gidiyorum. (I'm going to Izmir by plane.) 5) İzmir'e uçakla gidiyorum. (I'm going to Izmir by plane.) 6) İzmir'e otobüs ile gidiyorum. (I'm going to Izmir by bus.) 7) İzmir'e otobüsle gidiyorum. (I'm going to Izmir by bus.)

Please email us and tell us how we can improve the Learning Practical Turkish Web site.