5 Reasons Why Turkish Can Be an Easy Language to Learn

If you are interested in learning Turkish but have been told or have heard that it is a hard language to learn?

When we learn new things they are always hard in the beginning, whether that be sewing or baking. This is the same for learning a language, it might be different from the languages you know and have learned, but is Turkish all that hard to learn?

Here are 5 Reasons why Turkish is an easy language to learn.

Turkish uses the Latin Alphabet

In 1928 Turkey changed its writing system from the Arabic script to Latin. This means that Turkish uses the same alphabet as English, German, French, and Italian.

Although like in other Latin languages like German for example, there are a few extra letters, Ö, ü, and ç, these are just a few accents that Turkish uses.

Is Almost Completely Phonetic

The best thing about the alphabet is that every letter makes only one sound, compared to English with has many letters being pronounced differently, depending on the word, the rules, and exceptions. Which can be very difficult to learn.

The alphabet may be similar to English but there are a few things to be careful of, like “C” in English makes a “j” sound in Turkish. This can take some time to get used to.

No Articles or Gender

For those who are learning or know languages that have articles like German, Spanish, and Italian. We all know that it can be a headache trying to remember all the different articles in those languages, but this is what makes learning Turkish great.

Turkish has no articles, so you don't need to worry about which article or gender a specific word is. It is very much a genderless language when you think about it.

Turkish is an organized and systematic language

Every language has its own rules and Turkish is not an exception however, it is way easier to build sentences and speak.

In Turkish you begin mostly with the subject first, then the object, and last the verb. This might be a little tricky at first, because of the verb at the end, compare this to English as we often put the action words (verbs) earlier on in our sentences, and not at the end.

This will and can get easier in time, the more you learn and practice.

Flexible Word Order

Speaking of sentences, Turkish is a lot more flexible than English. There are 3 ways that you can build sentences for example in English “I am going to school” (subject (I) verb (going) object (School), in Turkish you can say:

• Ben okula gidiyorum (subject, object, verb)

• Okula gidiyorum ben (object, verb, subject)

• Gidiyorum ben okula (verb, Subject, object)

All of those sentences are correct and understandable, native Turkish speakers usually don't stay with the general subject-object-verb structure.

You can change the order of the words to emphasize one word to another.

How Long Does It Take To Learn Turkish?

According to the foreign language difficulty list of the FSI (Foreign service institute), it can take about 44 weeks to reach either B2 or C1 proficiency for those native English speakers.

This can be longer or shorter depending on your native language.

Conclusion

Turkish doesn't have to be a hard language, it can be fun and quite easy, it all depends on how you learn it, how much time you put into it, and your resources.

If you are enjoying learning the language, why stop? Keep going!