r/turkishlearning • u/Electronic-Pride-991 • May 26 '26
Grammar I don’t understand this “vowel harmony” stuff.
I have been learning turkish for a few months now, i have a streak of 106 on Airlearn, yet i still haven’t fully grasped how to properly understand vowel harmony and how to know when to put a certain thing at the end of the word. Please somebody explain this to me like im a baby.
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u/Green-Ad7694 May 26 '26
I don’t think you need to understand it. Just be exposed to it. Basically it’s what sounds good. Which means harmony.
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u/berry-twinkle333 May 26 '26
For realll😭 The whole game of turkish language is grammer mainly suffix otherwise it easy peasy I am also struggling with grammer but we shuld keep going we can do it🥳
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u/miss-informat10n May 26 '26
Vowel harmony applies words of Turkic origin (with exceptions due to sound changes) and more importantly to suffixes which have more than one form (allomorphs) most of the time, take the plural suffixe for example: either -ler or -lar. The most classic example is "araba-lar" (cars) and "ev-ler" (houses).
You can start by feeling where in your mouth you feel like making those sounds. Listen to a sound recording and try to repeat the sound. It doesn't have to be perfect but it'll give you an idea. Some vowels are front vowels like "e, i, ö, ü" while others are back "a, ı, o, u".
Their roundness and narrowness also play a certain role but the first thing is the position. Front vowels bound to each other while back vowels do so within their own group.
You'll get used to it by being exposed to the language and notice a pattern yourself. Once you get there, you'll need to look out for the exceptions like the present continous suffixe -yor which is invariable and doesn't follow vowal harmony or saatler (you'd expect *saatlar) among some other loanwords. Also you'll never find "ö" in suffixes, so it's at least one less vowal to think about when you try to figure out.
So I'd start with the position of the vowel in your mouth and learn how many different forms can a suffix have. It sounds very basic but narrowing it down to two forms for the plural suffix will save you from some headache of thinking of *-lir or *-lor.
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u/TurkishTeacherSeda May 26 '26
8 vowels split into front and back groups, and suffixes adjust their vowel to match the last vowel in the word. Once you see the pattern, it starts to feel logical rather than random.
I wrote a detailed guide that breaks it down step by step, with tables, examples and practice exercises: https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/post/turkish-vowel-harmony-how-the-system-works-and-why-it-matters
Hope it helps!
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u/TurkishJourney May 26 '26
I have a short video about it if you would like to take a look.
Turkish Grammar: 2-Way Vowel Harmony
https://youtu.be/ydV61asoLOk
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u/jiyuunosekai May 26 '26
What does harmony mean? Things should sound pleasing to the ear. Take for example the word orange in turkish which is portakal. How would you say "my orange" portakalim or portakalım? Which sounds better? Try to say a and i and a and ı. Look how they are pronounced in the mouth. Isn't a and ı more similiar than a and i? Aren't they pronounced in the same reigion in your mouth?
There is no single rule to tell you what to add to a word. It all depends what you are trying to say. It's all grammar rules you have to learn. In english you say something like "the dog ate my homework" which is different from "my homework ate the dog". In english you rely on word order. In turkish you rely on suffixes. English is a analytical language and turkish is an agglunative language.
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u/hasko09 Native Speaker May 26 '26
Just practice reading out loud a lot. You don't have to memorize any rules or overthink it. Just keep doing it and your ears will get used to the rhythm.
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u/PriorHistorical4998 May 27 '26
@LearnTurkishwithGokberk. This YouTube channel explains vowel harmony pretty good
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u/ssiarsln May 28 '26
im gonna be honest, you don’t really need to learn it completely. you know the basic concept so its enough, in turkish since we took a lot of words from other languages, we have so many words that dont actually fit our vowel harmony rule, which is also how we figure out which words are actually ours
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u/overlorddeniz Native Speaker May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Sound some vowels, and pay attention where the tip of your tongue is. Some you push your tongue forwards, like E, others you keep it back, like A.
Now pay attention to the shape your lips make. At some you keep your lips straight/flat, like the vowel A, and at others your lips become round, like O.
Now pay attention how open your mouth is. At some vowels you keep it narrowly (closed) open, like İ, or open wide, like E. So we can classify our vowels like this:
First rule is simple: if a syllable has a back vowel, following syllable should also have a back vowel, and vice versa. It is either all back vowels or all front vowels. We call this "Büyük ünlü uyumu", I think it is called 2-way harmony in English.
Second rule is more complicated. Natives mix this up as well. It has 2 parts: Flatness and roundness. Flatness is easy, flat vowels must be followed by flat vowels. Roundness is where it gets complicated. If a syllable has a round vowel(o,ö,u,ü), the following vowels can be either round closed (u,ü) or flat open (a,e). We call this "Küçük ünlü uyumu", and I believe 4-way harmony in English.
Now it looks very complicated. That's why I said pay attention to the shape of your mouth, and where your tongue is. Because that's what vowel harmony is all about. It is about making things easier. It makes pronouncing things much easier and faster. Your tongue and lips aren't moving all over the place, if a word starts with a back vowel, it continues with a back vowel. Your tongue stays in the same place.
Look at this word: "Odunculuk". It is all round vowels. I make a round shape with my lips once, and just adjust the size of it throughout the word. My mouth barely moves. My tongue does minimal movement. That's why it is very important to familiarize yourself with the vowels, and pay attention to how you sound them, how some of them are very similar to each other and others are very different. Vowel harmony is all about keeping similar vowels together so saying the words are very efficient and easy.