Learn some common noun prefixes in Turkish
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Intro |
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| Michael: What are some noun prefixes in Turkish? |
| Dilek: And why are they useful to know? |
| Michael: At TurkishClass101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Sasha Lee is studying with her friend, Kerim. She sees an unknown word and asks, |
| Dilek: "What does "namert" mean?" |
| Sasha Lee: "Namert" ne demek? |
| Dialogue |
| Sasha Lee: "Namert" ne demek? |
| Kerim Kandıralı: Korkak demek. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Sasha Lee: "Namert" ne demek? |
| Michael: "What does "namert" mean?" |
| Kerim Kandıralı: Korkak demek. |
| Michael: "It means "coward."" |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: In this lesson, we will be looking at Turkish "prefixes" or |
| Dilek: önekler. |
| Michael: In linguistics, prefixes are added before a root word to give a new meaning to it. The Turkish language actually doesn't use many prefixes, and in this lesson we'll look at them. |
| Just like in the English language, Turkish noun prefixes represent a fixed idea. When appended to nouns, they add a new meaning to the word they are attached to, either by making the word negative or expressing relations of time, place, manner, and so on. |
| [Recall] |
| Michael: Let's start taking a closer look at the dialogue. Do you remember what word Sasha was asking about? |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Dilek: Namert. |
| Michael: This word comes from Persian and is made up of the prefix |
| Dilek: na- |
| Michael: which is a privative prefix, meaning that its role is to negate the following word, which in this case is |
| Dilek: mert |
| Michael: meaning "man" or "manly." The word |
| Dilek: Namert. |
| Michael: means "crave" or "coward." You can easily guess that if someone acted cowardly they might be considered to have failed being manly. An interesting counterpart to this word is |
| Dilek: cömert |
| Michael: which is also of Persian origin and means "generous." Here, the prefix is |
| Dilek: cö- |
| Michael: which comes from a Persian word that indicates good and positive values. These two words are good examples of the role of prefixes in the Turkish language. They mostly occur in words of foreign origin. Let's see a few more. The first is |
| Dilek: otobiyografi |
| Michael: which means "autobiography," and is a compound of the Greek prefix |
| Dilek: oto- |
| Michael: meaning "oneself" and the word |
| Dilek: biyografi |
| Michael: which is also from Greek and means "life story." The same prefix is found in the word |
| Dilek: otomatik |
| Michael: which means "automatic" and, as in English, refers to something that can move independently, by itself. Let's list other similar words that made it to Turkish through French, which was commonly studied by wealthy people in the nineteenth century, but are actually of Greek or Latin origin and have a prefix. Here are a few: |
| Dilek: kilometre |
| Michael: which means "kilometer" |
| Dilek: kilogram |
| Michael: "kilogram" |
| Dilek: fotosentez |
| Michael: meaning "photosynthesis" |
| Dilek: fotoğraf |
| Michael: which means "photograph." |
| Michael: In this lesson, you learned that some Turkish words, mostly of foreign origin, are formed by two parts, a prefix, which usually suggests a fixed meaning and a root word, whose meaning changes when preceded by a prefix. |
| Expansion |
| Michael: There is another fact worth mentioning when talking about Turkish prefixes: the intensified adjectives or |
| Dilek: pekiştirme sıfatları |
| Michael: These are particularly common with adjectives that indicate colors. By adding a specific letter, you get an intensified version of the word. Let's consider the adjective meaning "pink" |
| Dilek: pembe |
| Michael: When you want to indicate that something is "intensely pink," you can say |
| Dilek: pespembe |
| Michael: To get this intensified version, we just repeated the first syllable and interposed the letter s, or |
| Dilek: s |
| Michael: There are three more letters that can appear in intensified adjectives, and they are |
| Dilek: p, m, r |
| Michael: Here is an sample sentence using the intensified adjective for "pink" |
| Dilek: Onun odası pespembe. |
| Michael: meaning "Her room is very pink." In this case, the speaker very likely means that everything in that room is pink. |
| Michael: Let's see another example, with the adjective meaning "black" |
| Dilek: kara |
| Michael: When you want to indicate that something is "pitch-black," you can say |
| Dilek: kapkara |
| Michael: To get this intensified version, we added the letter p, between the repeated syllable and the main word. Let's give an example. |
| Dilek: Talihim kapkara |
| Michael: which means "My fate is extremely dark." |
| Expansion |
| Dilek: yeşil |
| Michael: When you want to indicate that something is "intensely green" you can say |
| Dilek: yemyeşil |
| Michael: To get this intensified version, we added the letter m, between the repeated syllable and the main word. |
| Dilek: Arabımızın rengi yeşil. |
| Michael: Our car is green. |
| Dilek: Benim gözlerim yemyeşil. |
| Michael. "My eyes are very green." This just implies the greenness of the eyes. It is not just green but very very green! |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Dilek: Hoşçakalın! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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