Turkish Home page

by Miriam Fried About the Linguistics Challenge

Turkish is spoken by about 60 Linguistics Puzzles

million people in Turkey and
surrounding countries. It is a USA Linguistics Olympiad

member of the Altaic language

family, which consists of about 65 Next puzzle in the series
languages, including Turkmen,
Learn more about Turkish
Mongolian and maybe even Korean and Japanese. Until 1929, (external link)
Turkish was written in the Arabic writing system. That system
was then replaced by the Roman system, with a few special
letters to represent certain Turkish sounds. For example, in this
puzzle you will find the letter "ç" which represents a sound
similar to the first sound in the English word "chop."
The following are some Turkish words, followed by their English translations. Look at these words
carefully and try to answer the questions below:
kilimler 'carpets' arabalar 'cars'
kilimde 'in the carpet' deniz 'ocean'
deftere 'to the notebook' masa 'table'
defterlerde 'in the notebooks' ev 'house'
adamlara 'to the men' havuç 'carrot'
taraflarda 'in the sides' defter 'notebook'
okula 'to the school'

Following the patterns you see above, translate the following English words or phrases into
Turkish. You may use plain "c" to represent "ç":
'in the ocean' denizde 'to the carrot' havuca

'tables' masalar 'in the notebook' defterde

'to the houses' evlere Congratulations! 5 out of 5!

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co p yrig h t © 2005 Lin g u is tics So cie ty of Am e rica