No prepositions — endings instead
English builds 'in the house', 'from the house', 'to the house' out of a noun plus little words in front of it. Turkish glues the little word onto the back of the noun, and the noun simply grows to the right: ev is house → evde is in the house → evden is from the house → eve is to the house (movement toward). For example: “İstanbulda yaşıyorum” — I live in Istanbul. A rule from the Turkish course: worked out on…
How it works
English builds 'in the house', 'from the house', 'to the house' out of a noun plus little words in front of it. Turkish glues the little word onto the back of the noun, and the noun simply grows to the right: ev is house → evde is in the house → evden is from the house → eve is to the house (movement toward).
The tails stack in a strict order: ev-ler-im-de — in my houses — reads house-plural-my-in. That is the whole trick of the long words that look frightening at first sight: read them left to right, in chunks, not as one lump, and every chunk is a piece of English grammar you already own — a plural, a possessive, a preposition.
So where English says 'I live in Istanbul' with three separate words, Turkish says it with one: İstanbulda yaşıyorum — literally 'Istanbul-in I-live'.
By example
- İstanbulda yaşıyorumI live in Istanbul
- Eve gidiyorumI am going home
- Rusyadan geldimI came from Russia
How the rule settles in your head
A rule is not memorized from an explanation. It is memorized from an attempt to use it and a mistake — that is why the app delivers it mixed in with words, not as a separate lesson: it resurfaces exactly where you forgot it.
Frequently asked
No prepositions — endings instead: how does it work in Turkish?
English builds 'in the house', 'from the house', 'to the house' out of a noun plus little words in front of it. Turkish glues the little word onto the back of the noun, and the noun simply grows to the right: ev is house → evde is in the house → evden is from the house → eve is to the house…
What does it look like in an example sentence Turkish?
“İstanbulda yaşıyorum” — I live in Istanbul. A rule is easier to test on sentences like this than to memorize as a wording: what surfaces in conversation is the sentence.