LESSON N. 3:Turkish alphabet and vowel harmony.Conversation: What kind of restaurant?

Passage n.3: BU NASIL BİR LOKANTA?

ÇİĞDEM:     BU NASIL BİR LOKANTA?

ALİ:             ÇOK TEMİZ BİR LOKANTA.

ÇİĞDEM:    ÇOK BÜYÜK MÜ?

ALİ:             HAYIR, BÜYÜK DEĞİL.TEMİZ BİR LOKANTA.

ÇİĞDEM:    HANGİ LOKANTA DAHA TEMİZ

ALİ:             BU LOKANTA DAHA TEMİZ

ÇİĞDEM:    HANGİ OKUL DAHA BÜYÜK?

ALİ:             BU OKUL DAHA BÜYÜK.

VOCABULARY  - SÖZLÜK

LOKANTA: Restaurant 

TEMİZ:Clean

DAHA: More

BÜYÜK: Big, large

NASIL: How (interrogative form)

                                                                 GRAMMAR NOTES
Now let's start to familiarize with Turkish alphabet and vowel harmony.Study carefully all the sounds and the key rules.

The plural in Turkish is obtained by adding to a noun the suffixes  -LER   or  -LAR that show an indefinite plurality.
The choice is linked to the dominat vowel according to the vowel harmony rule which the fundamental feature of the Turkish language structure.

Those nouns whose final or dominant wovel is one of the front wovels  " i, e, ü, ö " will take -LER as the suffix to form the plural.

Those nouns whose final or dominant  vowel is one of the back vowels "a, ı, o, u"  will take  -LAR as the suffix to form the plural.

A few examples will make things clear:

Adam   (man)                 adamlar  (men)
Kitap    (book)                Kitaplar  (books)
Taksi    (taxi)                  Taxiler    (taxies)
Armut  (peer)                  Armutlar (peers)
kalem   (pen)                   Kalemler (pens)

It's not that difficult, isn't it?

In bold red you may notice the dominant or final wovel which is fundamental for the application of the vowel harmony and the choice of the plural suffix accordingly.

NOTE:
If the nouns are expressed by quantity, the noun itself will remain unchanged and won't take plural suffix.

examples:

Five pens = Beş  kalem
Three books:  Üç  kitap.