Turkish (Türkçe) belongs to the group of Turkish languages that are part of the Altaic languages. It is the only official language in Turkey and one of the official languages of Cyprus and a number of municipalities in Macedonia. It is also spoken in many Turkish communities in other countries. In Turkey itself, about 85% of the inhabitants speak Turkish as their native language, 12% speak Kurdish, and 3% speak another language. An important year in the history of the Turkish language is 1928, when Turkish switched from the Arabic to the Latin alphabet under the direction of statesman Kemal Atatürk.

Long words in Turkish

Turkish is a so-called agglutinating language, which means that prefixes and suffixes are stuck to the root of a word. This can result in very long words. Dutch is also quite good at this, but not to the same extent as Turkish. As such, Dutch is not considered an agglutinating language.

Special Turkish letters

The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters. Q, W, and X do not occur in the Turkish alphabet, although the W is used in very exceptional situations. Foreign influences sometimes require this; after all, without W, surfing the World Wide Web is difficult. The Latin alphabet used for Turkish is supplemented by the letters Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö, Ü, and Ş. One of those letters, the İ, is one of the two versions of the I in this alphabet; one always has a dot, both as an uppercase and lowercase letter. The other one never does.

Turkish influences in Dutch

Most people will identify the word sjasjlik as being Greek, but it is actually a Turkish word, and the geographic name Balkan also originates from Turkish. And the word yogurt also comes from Turkish, namely from the Turkish verb yoğurmak that means ‘to fatten’. A meaning that is hardly appropriate for yogurt anymore; today, it is available in various low fat versions.

In-country translators

Translation always involves a cultural component. Habits and customs are different everywhere and have a major influence on the way people interact with their language. That is why we like to work with in-country translators. In this case, Turkish translators who live in Turkey and speak Turkish as their native language. Translators who are close to the source.

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