Special features of TurkishAGGLUTINATIONTurkish comes very close to the 'ideal' of the agglutinating type of language: that is to say, the structure of the word is composed of a sequence of suffixes, each expressing a grammatical category, which are added to an unchanging root.For example, the word ellerimde, 'in my hands', is composed of el 'hand', the root, -1er, the plural suffix, -im, the possessive suffix of the first person singular, and -de, the locative suffix meaning 'in'.VOWEL HARMONYIn the process of agglutination, the most distinctive feature of Turkish is vowel harmony. The vowels used in the suffixes vary according to the principles of vowel harmony, which control the sequence of vowels that may occur within the word.There are two kinds of vowels. These are known as front vowels, which are produced at the front of the mouth (e, i o, u); and back vowels, which are produced at the back of the mouth (a, 1, o, u). As a rule, Turkish words can contain only all front or all back vowels (e.g. torun 'grandchild', toren 'ceremony') and the vowels of suffixes added to any word vary according to the type of vowel(s) in the root. Thus, el 'hand', eller 'hands*, ellerim 'my hands', ellerime 'to my hands'; but at 'horse', atlar 'horses', atlanm 'my horses', atlarima 'to my horses'.WORD ORDERLanguages are also classified in terms of three different types of word order in their sentence structure. We find in all -languages that sentences contain a subject (S), a verb (V), and an object (O). In some languages the basic or preferred order of these elements is (SVO). Many familiar languages, much as French, Spanish and English are examples. Turkish, on the other hand, like Japanese and Korean, has. as its preferred order subject-object-verb (SOV). Others such as classical Hebrew and Welsh are (VSO) languages.Word order, an important aspect of grammar, has a crucial function in making a sentence meaningful and intelligible. For example, if we jumble up the words of the sentence, 'What are you looking for?' to read 'for are looking what you?' then it becomes totally unintelligible. This is due to the ordering of its words which is unacceptable according to the laws of English sentence structure. However, there are cases where the word order is neither very rigidly fixed nor very free but generally fixed with a very minor degree of freedom, in English for example the common word order as mentioned above is subject-verb-object, but it is also possible to have object-subject-verb. The latter is very much less frequent. Moreover, it seems not at all natural in many sentences. It is most common in a few rather stereotyped sentences uttered for stylistic purposes, e.g. 'This I must see'.The SOV type of Turkish word order, on the other hand, is much more flexible than the SVO order of English. ATurkish speaker can use the word order to draw attention to both the main topic of the sentence and the word he particularly wishes to emphasize. This is because the first word in the sentence indicates the main topic - what the sentence is really all about - and the word immediately in front of the verb indicates the word the speaker wants to stress or emphasize.For example, take the simple sentence 'Ahmet ate the apple'. As was earlier explained, the preferred order of words in Turkish is SOV: Ahmet elmay yedi. This can convey either the simple statement that Ahmet ate the apple, r can emphasize that Ahmet ate the apple and not the banana. If one varies the word order to Elmay Ahmet yedi, this would signify that it was Ahmet who ate the apple, and not someone else. There are however two other word orders which would be perfectly possible: Elmay yedi Ahmet, or Ahmet yedi elmay. They would probably be used for reasons of style, or particularly if there is more to come in the same sentence.

RHYTHMTurkish, like Spanish and French, is a so-called 'syllabletimed' language, as opposed to English, which is 'stresstimed'. In other words, the overall rhythmic pattern of Turkish pronunciation is carried out by pronouncing the sequences of syllables, whether stressed or unstressed, at a steady rate with equal intervals. In English, however, it is only the stressed syllables that occur at regular intervals of time, and the unstressed ones are made to fit in:He-says that he-wants us to-take it a-way.In Turkish pronunciation, the rhythmic pattern of an equal number of syllables would be:A-te-ol-ma-yan-yer-den-du-man-k-maz.(There's no smoke without fire).Therefore, the syllable-timing of Turkish may constitute a fundamental difficulty of pronunciation, which can be overcome only by paying deliberate and systematic attention to it. The stress-timed speech habit of English will continually interfere in speaking Turkish and it is probably more worthwhile to pay attention to the syllable-timing of Turkish than to any other pronunciation feature. Even if an acceptable articulation of each individual vowel and consonant of Turkish has been acquired, a clear and even an intelligible pronunciation of Turkish will not be achieved so long as the stress-timing of English is carried over into Turkish.

BEING A SUCCESSFUL LEARNERFinally, we would like to mention that successful language learners, while trying to figure out how the language works and find out its structure its grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary and usage - are impelled by a powerful urge to communicate, are never inhibited or afraid of making mistakes, and are good guessers and risk-takers. They know that language is for communication and use, and that it is not sufficient to pay attention only to the grammar. Above all, they understand that it is impossible to learn a language without regular, frequent and persistent practice.