u/TurkishTeacherSeda

Turkish says “am, is, are” mostly through short endings on the last word of the sentence.

Hava güzel (the weather is nice) is already a complete sentence. For “he, she, it is” in the present tense, nothing is added. For the other persons, an ending carries the meaning: Yorgunum, I’m tired. Evdeyiz, we’re at home. Hazır mısın?, are you ready?

The past works the same way, with another ending: Hastaydım, I was ill. When something changes, Turkish switches to the verb olmak: Hasta oldum, I got ill. Olmak also gives the future: Yarın burada olacağım, I’ll be here tomorrow. “There is” and “I have” use var and yok: Evde ekmek var, there’s bread at home. Kitabım var, I have a book.

This is also why one-word answers like İyiyim, Evde or Benim are complete sentences in Turkish.

I wrote a longer article on this, with tables and everyday conversations...

“Whoever loves the rose puts up with its thorns.”

We use this Turkish proverb when someone complains about the difficulties that come with something they love. It could be a relationship, a demanding job, or even a hobby.

There's some interesting grammar here, too. In gülü seven, the suffix -en turns sevmek (to love) into “the one who loves.”

And if you enjoy Turkish literature, the rose and its thorns have a long history in Ottoman poetry.

I wrote a little more about the meaning, grammar, and literary background here:

Learn Turkish with Seda started as free grammar pages for my students. Over time it picked up a lot more: idioms, Turkish literature, history articles, student stories, a section on places and plants in Türkiye. If you know one part of it, there's a good chance you've never seen the others.

So I wrote one guide that walks through the whole thing. The free A1-C1 grammar lessons and their PDFs, the beginner guide and flashcards, a list of course books and dictionaries by other authors, and where everything else lives.

I also ended up writing about how the parts connect, since an idiom page tends to send you to a grammar lesson, and a history post to an idiom. That's mostly how my own head works, I'm afraid.

I’ve updated a full lesson on the Turkish locative case (-de/-da) to my grammar section.

The locative case, bulunma hâli, is used to express where someone or something is:

evde → at home
okulda → at school
parkta → at the park

The lesson explains -de, -da, -te, -ta, vowel and consonant harmony, personal pronouns, and common uses with examples.

You can read the full lesson

I’ve just published the next video in my Turkish noun cases series.

This lesson is about the locative case: -de / -da, or bulunma hâli in Turkish.

We look at how -de/-da changes to -te/-ta, how vowel and consonant harmony work, and how we use the locative case with nouns and personal pronouns.

ev + de + y + im → evdeyim
“I am at home.”

Watch the video :)

I put together a guide to making a Turkish breakfast at home.

It begins with tea, then bread, white cheese, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggs if you want something hot. I also included menemen, sucuklu yumurta, and the Turkish words you will hear around the table.

One of my students in the US recently passed along a question from a librarian in Michigan. She was looking for children's books for third graders, including books available in Turkish and English.

I started with that age group and eventually expanded the list from toddlers to age 14.

It includes English translations of books by Turkish authors, Turkish-English bilingual books, and separate Turkish-language collections for children who already read Turkish. There are books by Feridun Oral, Funda Özlem Şeran, Şermin Yaşar, Sara Şahinkanat, Behiç Ak, Aytül Akal, Rıfat Ilgaz, Aziz Nesin and others.

I also added free resources from PIKTES and EBA. These include Turkish story series, songs with video, vocabulary cards and downloadable reading materials for children learning Turkish.

If you know a Turkish children's book available in English that I've missed, I'd be glad to add it.

Lokum has been part of Ottoman and Turkish sweet-making for centuries, although the version we know today changed considerably over time.

Its history takes us to Hacı Bekir’s confectionery in Istanbul in 1777, changing ingredients in the nineteenth century, and the period when lokum began travelling beyond the Ottoman Empire. Even the origin of the word lokum has more than one explanation.

I went back to an older article on my site and expanded the history and sources.

Students visiting Türkiye ask me this fairly often. The answers are usually more ordinary than the standard souvenir list: a cezve, hamam things, spices, a nazar boncuğu. I wrote about these, the Turkish vocabulary and background around them, and included a few places to look for some of them. There's also the reverse version, what Turks living abroad often carry back from Türkiye.

I write about Turkish through history and geography as much as grammar, so I put together a piece on Ağrı Dağı, known internationally as Mount Ararat, for the Land section of my site.

The name Ararat doesn't come from the mountain itself. It comes from Urartu, an ancient kingdom that once stood near Lake Van, and the name was attached to this particular peak much later. In Turkish, the mountain is called Ağrı Dağı, and it rises above the town of Doğubayazıt near the borders with Iran and Armenia.

I also started reading about the flood traditions connected to it. Jewish and Christian tradition became closely associated with Ararat, while the Quran places Noah's Ark on Cudi Dağı, much farther south.

Yaşar Kemal's novel Ağrıdağı Efsanesi is also set on this landscape, a love story built around it.

The full write-up also has practical information for anyone visiting or climbing Mount Ararat