What does a Turkish summer look like beyond the beach?
There is the old yayla tradition, the Ottoman sayfiye, the family yazlık, evenings on the sahil, bags of çekirdek, and waiting for the akşam serinliği before going outside.
I followed these words through Turkish history and everyday life in my new blog post.
Put together a full entry on Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's 1961 novel about a fictional institute created to make sure everyone's clock agrees with the official time. It fines people for clocks that run fast or slow, builds an entire bureaucracy around the problem, and eventually invents a historical saint to give itself legitimacy.
Covers the novel's characters, structure, and a few key Turkish words, ayar (adjustment) especially, that carry more weight in the book than their dictionary definitions suggest. Full entry here for anyone interested.
https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/heritages/saatleri-ayarlama-enstitusu
If you're reading Turkish at a C1 level or aiming for one, Tanpınar's Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü is a demanding but rewarding target. The vocabulary shifts registers constantly, and a lot of the humor depends on tone rather than dictionary meaning, a character saying something absurd in completely serious Turkish.
Put together an entry covering the novel's plot, characters, and a few of its key words, including ayar, which starts out meaning clock adjustment and ends up meaning something much bigger.
If you're past the beginner stage in Turkish and want to try reading something with real literary weight, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is a common starting point people recommend. His novels move slowly and the vocabulary is dense, but the payoff is worth it once you get used to his style.
Put together a profile on his life and work, plus a few of his key words that don't translate cleanly (huzur, yekpâre), here: https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/heritages/ahmet-hamdi-tanpinar
If you're past the intermediate stage in Turkish and want to try reading something with real literary weight, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is a common starting point people recommend. His novels move slowly and the vocabulary is dense, but the payoff is worth it once you get used to his style.
Put together a profile on his life and work, plus a few of his keywords that don't translate cleanly (huzur, yekpâre)
This week's student story is from Georgina, who lives in Athens. She got hooked on Turkish through a TV series filmed in Cappadocia, taught herself with apps, and then had a rough wake up call in Istanbul when she realized she could read Turkish but not understand it spoken.
Read the full piece: https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/post/learning-turkish-in-athens-a-greek-neighbour-s-path
One of my students in Athens wrote up her experience learning Turkish, starting with a TV show, then teaching herself with apps for a while, then getting to Istanbul and completely blanking when people actually talked to her. She describes her memory as "a dusty old filing cabinet," which felt pretty relatable. Sharing in case anyone else is stuck in that same gap between recognizing words and actually understanding speech...
A1 lesson: how Turkish vowel harmony actually works, front-back, rounding, and the loanwords like saat and kalp that don't play by the rules. Free PDF download on the page too.
https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/turkish-grammar-lessons/vowel-harmony-basics
New A1 lesson: how Turkish vowel harmony actually works, front-back, rounding, and the loanwords like saat and kalp that don't play by the rules. Free PDF download on the page too.
https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/turkish-grammar-lessons/vowel-harmony-basics
https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/post/which-languages-are-closest-to-turkish
Azerbaijani gets named the most, but the real picture includes Gagauz and Turkmen too, and how close each one actually is depends on whether you're talking about shared ancestry, shared grammar, or how much a Turkish speaker can actually understand without studying. Made a short video on it, full breakdown with sources is in the article if you want to go deeper.
I’m looking for some good free Turkish podcasts or YouTube channels to share with my students for extra listening practice.
I already know and like Akıcı Türkçe, but I’d love to hear from Turkish learners themselves. Which podcasts or channels do you actually enjoy listening to and find useful?
I’m especially interested in content with clear, fairly simple Turkish that learners can follow without feeling completely lost.
What are your favorites?
Turkish belongs to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic family, along with Azerbaijani, Gagauz, and Turkmen, but "closest" turns out to mean different things depending on whether you're measuring ancestry, grammar, or actual comprehension between speakers. Put together a piece looking at where Turkish actually sits in the language family. Details and sources are in the link if you're curious.
No. Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language, and Turkish is Turkic. Still, the resemblance some people hear has real historical and structural reasons. Both languages often place the verb at the end, both include Arabic and Persian vocabulary through different routes, and even the name Urdu has a Turkic connection through ordu, meaning “army” or “camp.”
I also looked at why Turkish dramas became so widely watched in Urdu-speaking Pakistan.
The full article is on the blog:
learnturkishwithseda.com/post/is-urdu-related-to-turkish
I run a platform for Turkish learners, and I kept seeing "Urdu vs Turkish" show up in my search traffic. I don't speak Urdu, so I got curious and did the research properly instead of guessing. The short version: the two languages belong to completely different families, but they share a real sentence rhythm (verb at the end), a long history of borrowed Arabic and Persian vocabulary, and, oddly enough, the word "Urdu" itself has Turkic roots. I go through the actual linguistics and history here, along with why Pakistani viewers of Turkish TV dramas keep running into this question: https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/post/is-urdu-related-to-turkish
Why Does This Flower Cry Every Morning?
Each spring, ters lale (Fritillaria imperialis) blooms in Türkiye’s eastern mountains with its bells turned toward the earth. A clear drop forms inside each flower in the morning, giving it the name ağlayan gelin, “the weeping bride.”
For centuries, people have connected its bowed head and “tears” to stories of Karbala, the Virgin Mary, and impossible love.
Read the full story:
https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/lands/ters-lale
Second letter in a series where my students write about their own experience learning Turkish. This one is from JF, in Texas, who fell for Türkiye on a trip in 2013 and finally found his way to fluency through one-to-one lessons.
I get some version of the same message constantly: "I understand everything but freeze the second I have to say something." Usually from people in one of a few situations. Living in Türkiye but nobody lets them finish a sentence before switching to English. No Turkish speakers anywhere nearby. Turkish partner or friends, but somehow still barely any actual speaking practice, because friendships need balance and nobody wants to spend every conversation waiting on you.
Wrote a longer piece on what actually helps. Private speech, shadowing, why understanding a language and producing it are genuinely different skills, and why your brain feels tired after speaking Turkish (it's not you, it's an unautomated skill, same as sore arms after a new gym routine).
Can you guess what "pounding water in a mortar" means in Turkish? Someone says "Havanda su dövmek" about a long meeting that decided nothing. What does it actually mean?
Made a quick reference sheet for the Turkish future tense (-ecek / -acak). Covers the formula, vowel harmony, personal endings, and the two sound changes that shape the final form. Full lesson and free PDF
The Turkish dative case (-e / -a) means "to." Ev → eve, okul → okula, hastane → hastaneye (buffer -y before vowels). Proper nouns take an apostrophe: İstanbul'a, Seda'ya. Full lesson: https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/turkish-grammar-lessons/dative-case-ya