Notes · TurkishUK · A-Levels

Grammar and translation: Paper 1 Section A, Paper 2 Section A, and the whole of Appendix 2

This topic carries the two translation tasks and the grammar that makes them possible. Paper 1 Section A is an unseen Turkish passage translated into English for 20 marks in a recommended twenty minutes; Paper 2 Section A is an unseen English passage translated into Turkish for 20 marks in a recommended thirty minutes. Both are marked by the same points-based scheme, one mark for each correct individual section of language, and the content of each may be drawn from any one of the eight sub-themes, so nothing here is separable from the thematic topics. Behind them sits Appendix 2, the specification's grammar list, which is unusually long and unusually technical for an MFL A-Level and is printed with the Turkish grammatical terminology beside the English. Turkish is agglutinative and left-branching, it has vowel harmony, it has no grammatical gender, no definite article and no relative pronoun, and it marks in the verb whether the speaker witnessed what they are reporting. Those five facts, taken seriously, are the difference between a translation that reads like Turkish and one that reads like English wearing Turkish suffixes. The orthographic policy for the whole subject is settled here: the 29-letter Turkish alphabet adopted on 1 November 1928, with i and ı, İ and I, treated throughout as the separate letters they are.

5 sections~37 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 2 · Advanced 2

T·0777 / 12

Exam profile

AO2 · Understand written Turkish closely enough to render it into accurate, idiomatic EnglishAO3 · Manipulate Turkish accurately in writing — vowel harmony, suffix order, case, tense, aspect, evidentiality and voiceAO3 · Use a range of lexis and structure, including the participles and converbs that replace English subordinate clausesAO4 · Carry thematic content across a language boundary without distorting what a Turkish source actually claims

Operators:çevirmekaçıklamakkarşılaştırmakçözümlemekgerekçelendirmekdüzeltmekuygulamaktüretmek

basic level

At first-year standard the expectation is that the harmony rules are applied without thinking, that the six cases are secure, that the five simple tenses are formed correctly in all four of positive, negative, question and negative question, and that a translation into English produces sentences an English reader would accept.

higher level

The full A-Level expects the compound moods, the participles used instead of relative clauses, at least a working set of converbs, the accusative used to mark a definite object and withheld from an indefinite one, and the difference between the witnessed and the reported past used deliberately rather than by accident.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Grammar and translation: Paper 1 Section A, Paper 2 Section A, and the whole of Appendix 2

The two translations, the points-based scheme, and the shape of Appendix 2#

FoundationPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Paper 1 Section A — Translation into EnglishPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Paper 2 Section A — Translation into TurkishPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Appendix 2 — Grammar list

Forty of the qualification's 250 marks are translation, split evenly between the two directions, and the specification treats them as one skill assessed twice. Paper 1 Section A gives one unseen Turkish text and asks for English, 20 marks in a recommended twenty minutes. Paper 2 Section A gives one unseen English text and asks for Turkish, 20 marks in a recommended thirty minutes — ten minutes longer, because producing accurate Turkish is slower than producing accurate English. Both are marked by a points-based scheme in which one mark is given for each correct individual section of language. That phrase decides everything about how you should work. The examiner is not forming a general impression of your version; the passage has been divided into scoring segments in advance, and each segment is either right or it is not.

The practical consequence is that omission is fatal and paraphrase is expensive. A segment you skip cannot score, so a rough attempt at every segment beats a polished attempt at most of them. A segment you render loosely may still fail even though the sentence around it reads well, because the mark sits on a particular piece of language — a tense, a case, a connective, a possessive — and a smooth English sentence that quietly drops the reported past has lost the mark it was there to earn. In my experience of this task the two directions fail differently: into English, candidates lose marks by writing English that is too close to the Turkish word order; into Turkish, they lose marks by attaching suffixes that do not harmonise, or by leaving out the accusative that marks a definite object.

The content of both passages is drawn from the themes. The specification says so for each paper: the content of the translation will be taken from any one of the sub-themes within the four themes. This is why translation cannot be revised as a separate module. A passage about kırsal kesimden kente göç will use the vocabulary of migration and urbanisation; a passage about geleneksel el sanatları will use craft vocabulary; a passage about mülteciler will use the legal vocabulary of protection status. Every thematic topic in these notes therefore carries at least one translation worked example, and the lexical fields you build for AO4 are the same fields that pay for AO3.

Appendix 2 is the grammar contract, and it is worth reading once from beginning to end so that nothing in it surprises you in June. It begins with phonetics — ünlü uyumu, ünsüz uyumu and ünsüz değişimi — then sentence types including the canonical kurallı cümle and the inverted devrik cümle; then noun morphology, the three kinds of isim tamlaması, pronouns including the pronominal -ki, and the declension of nouns with its possessive suffixes, its interrogative particle, its equalisation suffix and its five cases; then adjectives, adverbs, postpositions and conjunctions; then the predicative ek fiil, auxiliary verbs, the simple indicative and optative moods, the compound moods, verbal nouns, seven participles, seventeen converbs and seven voices. It is long, but it is finite, and the next four sections of this topic cover all of it.

Worked example

Paper 1 Section A: translating a passage on the world of work, segment by segment

Translate into English. Türkiye’de genç işsizliği uzun süredir tartışılan bir konudur. Üniversiteyi bitiren gençlerin bir bölümü, aldıkları eğitimle ilgisi olmayan işlerde çalışmak zorunda kalıyor. Meslek liselerinden mezun olanların ise iş bulma oranı daha yüksek görünüyor; ancak bu okulların itibarı hâlâ düşüktür.

Sentence one, and the -DIr that sets the register
Türkiye’de genç işsizliği uzun süredir tartışılan bir konudur. Türkiye’de is the locative on a proper noun, so the apostrophe is obligatory. Genç işsizliği is a belirtisiz isim tamlaması, an indefinite compound: bare first noun plus third-person possessive on the second, so youth unemployment as a type of thing, not the unemployment of a particular young person. Uzun süredir means for a long time now and takes the present, not the past. Tartışılan is the -(y)An participle on the passive of tartışmak, so a subject that is discussed. Konudur carries -DIr, the copula that marks a generalising statement in formal register. Render: Youth unemployment in Turkey is a subject that has long been debated.
Sentence two, and the participle that hides a relative clause
Üniversiteyi bitiren gençlerin bir bölümü, aldıkları eğitimle ilgisi olmayan işlerde çalışmak zorunda kalıyor. Üniversiteyi carries the accusative because it is a definite object; bitiren is again -(y)An, so young people who finish university. Gençlerin bir bölümü is genitive plus possessive, a portion of them. Aldıkları eğitim is the -DIk participle with a possessive, the education they have received — Turkish has no relative pronoun and builds the clause this way. İlgisi olmayan is the negative of olmak with -(y)An, having no connection. Zorunda kalmak is to be obliged to. Render: Some of the young people who finish university are forced to work in jobs unconnected with the education they received.
Sentence three, and the two connectives that carry the argument
Meslek liselerinden mezun olanların ise iş bulma oranı daha yüksek görünüyor; ancak bu okulların itibarı hâlâ düşüktür. İse is a contrastive particle attached after the topic, best rendered in English as as for, or by contrast, or simply by starting a new clause with whereas. Mezun olanların is the -(y)An participle nominalised and put in the genitive, of those who graduate. İş bulma oranı is a verbal noun in a compound, the rate of finding work. Ancak is however. Hâlâ is still, and it takes the circumflex. Düşüktür is again the formal -DIr. Render: For those who graduate from vocational high schools, by contrast, the rate of finding work appears higher; however, the standing of these schools is still low.
Check the English, not the Turkish
The final pass is on your English alone. Read it aloud with the Turkish covered. Does it sound like something an English newspaper would print? The commonest failure at this point is a sentence that has kept the Turkish order — Some of the young people who university finished — and a second is an English tense that does not match: uzun süredir tartışılan is not was discussed but has long been debated. Points-based marking still rewards each segment separately, but a segment rendered in English that does not exist is not a correct rendering.

Result: Youth unemployment in Turkey is a subject that has long been debated. Some of the young people who finish university are forced to work in jobs unconnected with the education they received. For those who graduate from vocational high schools, by contrast, the rate of finding work appears higher; however, the standing of these schools is still low.

Typical mistakes

Leaving a phrase blank because you cannot see the perfect version. An imperfect attempt can score; a gap cannot.
Translating into English in Turkish word order, so the verb arrives late and the sentence reads as a crib.
Revising translation as a skill in the abstract, separately from the themes that supply its vocabulary.
Assuming Appendix 2 mirrors a French or Spanish grammar list. It is longer, and it is printed in Turkish terminology.

Active revision

Take any 120-word Turkish news paragraph on one of the eight sub-themes. Divide it yourself into what you think are twenty scoring segments, then translate it into English and mark your own version segment by segment, awarding a mark only where the specific piece of language is right. Repeat in the other direction with an English paragraph.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Turkish (9TU0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Vowel harmony, consonant harmony and consonant mutation: the three rules that shape every suffix#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Appendix 2 §1 — Phonetics: vowel harmony, consonant harmony, consonant mutationPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Paper 2 Section A — Translation into Turkish

The two vowel-harmony systems

Fig. 1Everything about Turkish suffixation follows from this table. Read across from the last vowel of the word to find which vowel the suffix must take. The left-hand system, written A in the archiphoneme notation, has only two outputs and governs the plural, the dative, the negative and the optative among others. The right-hand system, written I, has four outputs and governs the accusative, the genitive, the possessive, the reported past and the present continuous. The two example columns show the same rule applied twice to the same word, once through a two-way suffix and once through a four-way one, so that the pattern can be checked in both systems at a glance. A word borrowed into Turkish may break harmony internally — otobüs, kitap, televizyon — but the suffix still follows the last vowel of the word as written.

Turkish has eight vowels and they sort along two axes. Four are back — a, ı, o, u — and four are front — e, i, ö, ü. Four are unrounded — a, e, ı, i — and four are rounded — o, ö, u, ü. Vowel harmony means that the vowel of a suffix is determined by the last vowel of the word it attaches to, and there are two systems. The two-way system, which grammarians write as A, chooses between a and e: a after a back vowel, e after a front one. The four-way system, written I, chooses among ı, i, u and ü: ı after a or ı, i after e or i, u after o or u, ü after ö or ü. Almost every suffix in the language belongs to one system or the other, which is why learning the two rules once is worth more than learning a hundred suffix forms.

The archiphoneme notation used throughout these notes is the standard one and it saves enormous time: a capital A stands for the pair a/e, a capital I for the set ı/i/u/ü, a capital D for d/t, a capital C for c/ç and a capital K for k/ğ. So the locative is -DA, which surfaces as -da, -de, -ta or -te; the accusative is -(y)I, which surfaces as -yı, -yi, -yu, -yü, -ı, -i, -u or -ü; the present continuous is -Iyor, which surfaces as -ıyor, -iyor, -uyor or -üyor. Written this way, a rule that looks like eight separate endings collapses into one shape plus two harmony rules. Read a capital letter in a suffix as an instruction, not as a letter to be pronounced.

Consonant harmony, ünsüz uyumu, governs the first consonant of the suffix rather than its vowel. A suffix that begins with c, d or g hardens to ç, t or k when the stem ends in one of the eight voiceless consonants f, s, t, k, ç, ş, h, p — a set Turkish schoolchildren remember by the mnemonic name Fıstıkçı Şahap. So evde but kitapta, evden but kitaptan, geldi but gitti, yolcu but işçi. Consonant mutation, ünsüz değişimi or ünsüz yumuşaması, works in the opposite direction and on the stem: a stem-final p, ç, t or k softens to b, c, d or ğ when a suffix beginning with a vowel is attached. Kitap becomes kitabı, ağaç becomes ağacın, kanat becomes kanadı, ayak becomes ayağa. After n, k softens to g rather than ğ: renk becomes rengi.

The exceptions to mutation are as important as the rule, because over-applying it is a commoner error at A-Level than failing to apply it. Most single-syllable words do not soften: top becomes topu, at becomes atı, saç becomes saçı, ek becomes eki. Proper nouns never soften in writing, however they are pronounced: Sinop’a, not Sinob’a; Ahmet’in, not Ahmed’in; Zonguldak’ın. A small set of loanwords resists too. There is also a set of two-syllable nouns that lose their second vowel when a vowel-initial suffix arrives — şehir becomes şehri, burun becomes burnu, ağız becomes ağzı, oğul becomes oğlu — which is not harmony at all but a separate phenomenon, and one that a marker will notice immediately if you get it wrong.

Consonant harmony and consonant mutation

Fig. 2The two consonant rules pull in opposite directions and are constantly confused. Consonant harmony changes the first letter of the suffix and is triggered by the last sound of the stem being voiceless; consonant mutation changes the last letter of the stem and is triggered by the suffix beginning with a vowel. A translation into Turkish that gets the vowels right and the consonants wrong loses marks in exactly the same way as one that gets neither right, so both rules have to be automatic. The final row is the one candidates neglect: the blocking conditions are as examinable as the rule itself, and the list of one-syllable words that do not soften is short enough to learn by heart.

Worked example

Paper 2 Section A: building four words correctly from the root outwards

Render into Turkish, showing every harmony decision: from our opticians; in the newspapers; it had not been made to be written; from the tree.

From our opticians: göz, gözlük, gözlükçü, gözlükçüler, gözlükçülerimiz, gözlükçülerimizden
Start from göz, eye. Its vowel ö is front and rounded, so a four-way suffix takes ü: the instrument suffix -lIK gives gözlük, spectacles. Gözlük ends in ü, still front and rounded, so the agent suffix -CI takes ü — and its first consonant hardens to ç because k is in the Fıstıkçı Şahap set: gözlükçü, optician. Gözlükçü ends in ü, front, so the plural -lAr takes e: gözlükçüler. Then the first-person plural possessive -ImIz, four-way after e, takes i twice: gözlükçülerimiz. Finally the ablative -DAn, two-way after i, takes e, and its d stays soft because z is voiced: gözlükçülerimizden.
In the newspapers: gazete, gazeteler, gazetelerde
Gazete ends in e, front unrounded. The plural -lAr therefore takes e: gazeteler. The locative -DA is two-way, so it takes e; its consonant stays d because r is voiced: gazetelerde. Compare kitaplarda, where the stem kitap has a back last vowel a, giving -lar, and the locative -DA then attaches to r — also voiced — so it is again -da. The hardening in kitapta only happens when -DA attaches directly to the p.
It had not been made to be written: yaz, yazdır, yazdırıl, yazdırılma, yazdırılmamış, yazdırılmamıştı
Yaz is the root, write. The causative -DIr, four-way after a, takes ı and keeps its d because z is voiced: yazdır, to have written. The passive after a consonant other than l is -Il, four-way after ı, so ı again: yazdırıl. The negative -mA is two-way after ı, so a: yazdırılma. The reported past -mIş is four-way after a, so ı: yazdırılmamış. The narrative compound marker -(y)DI attaches to ş, which is voiceless, so it hardens to t, and it is four-way after ı, so ı: yazdırılmamıştı. Six suffixes, and every one of them was decided by the vowel or consonant immediately to its left.
From the tree: ağaç, ağacı, ağaçtan — and why two of these look inconsistent
Ağaç, tree. The accusative -(y)I begins with a vowel, so the final ç softens to c and the four-way vowel after a is ı: ağacı. The ablative -DAn begins with a consonant, so nothing softens; instead consonant harmony fires, ç being voiceless, and d hardens to t; the two-way vowel after a is a: ağaçtan. Both forms are correct and the apparent inconsistency is the whole point — mutation needs a vowel-initial suffix, harmony needs a consonant-initial one, and they can never both apply to the same junction.

Result: gözlükçülerimizden; gazetelerde; yazdırılmamıştı; ağaçtan — with ağacı given alongside to show mutation and harmony operating at the same junction under different conditions.

Typical mistakes

Writing kitapda or evte. The suffix consonant follows the stem's final sound, not the other way round.
Softening a proper noun: Sinob’a for Sinop’a, Ahmed’in for Ahmet’in. Never in writing.
Softening every one-syllable noun. Top becomes topu, not tobu; at becomes atı, not adı, which is a different word.
Choosing the four-way vowel from the first vowel of the word rather than the last. Only the last vowel counts.

Active revision

Take twenty Turkish nouns whose last vowels between them cover all eight vowels and whose final consonants include several from Fıstıkçı Şahap. Write each one in all six cases, in the singular and the plural, and then check every ending against the two tables in this section. Any cell you had to think about twice is a cell to drill.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Turkish (9TU0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

The noun: six cases, the possessive suffixes, the suffix-order template and the three noun phrases#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Appendix 2 §3 — Nouns, noun phrases, pronouns, declension of nounsPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Paper 2 Section A — Translation into Turkish

The six case forms across three stem types

Fig. 3The three stems are chosen deliberately. Ev has a front vowel, okul a back vowel, and kitap both a back vowel and a final p that mutates — so reading down any column drills harmony, and reading across any row drills the case. The suffix column gives all four surface shapes where a case has four, because the archiphoneme is only useful once you can see what it unpacks into. Note that the genitive and the accusative differ only in the presence of the n, and that after a vowel both take a buffer, giving arabanın and arabayı; that pair is where most accuracy marks in this area are lost.

Turkish nouns take six case forms and no articles. The nominative is bare; the genitive marks the possessor and is -(n)In; the accusative marks a definite object and is -(y)I; the dative marks motion towards, the indirect object and many verb complements and is -(y)A; the locative marks position and is -DA; the ablative marks motion away, comparison and source and is -DAn. Appendix 2 lists five, counting the bare form as no case at all, and gives each its Turkish name: ilgi durumu, belirtme durumu, yönelme durumu, bulunma durumu, ayrılma durumu. What matters more than the labels is that many Turkish verbs govern a case an English speaker does not expect: başlamak takes the dative, so işe başladı; korkmak takes the ablative, so köpekten korkuyor; yardım etmek takes the dative, so annesine yardım etti. These have to be learnt with the verb, exactly as a German student learns a verb with its case.

The accusative is the single highest-value rule in this qualification for a translation into Turkish, because Turkish has no definite article and the accusative does the work instead. Kitap okuyorum means I am reading, or I am doing some book-reading; the object is indefinite and non-specific and takes no ending. Kitabı okuyorum means I am reading the book; the object is definite, and the accusative says so. Bir film izledim is I watched a film; filmi izledim is I watched the film. Proper nouns, pronouns and anything already made definite by a possessive always take the accusative when they are objects. Get this wrong and the English article system has been imported into a language that does not have one — which the AO3 accuracy grid describes as an error that hinders clarity.

The possessive suffixes are -(I)m, -(I)n, -(s)I, -(I)mIz, -(I)nIz and -lArI, and they do the work of English my, your, his, our, your and their: evim, evin, evi, evimiz, eviniz, evleri. After a vowel the third person inserts a buffer s, giving oda, room, and odası, his room. Buffer consonants generally are worth memorising as a set, because leaving one out is a visible error: y appears between two vowels at a case boundary, as in odaya and arabayı; n appears after a third-person possessive or a demonstrative before a case ending, as in evinde and bunu; s appears in the third-person possessive after a vowel, as in odası and kapısı.

Appendix 2 names three kinds of isim tamlaması and the distinction between the first two is a translation trap. The belirtili isim tamlaması, the definite compound, puts the first noun in the genitive and the second in the possessive: kitabın kapağı, the cover of the book — a particular book. The belirtisiz isim tamlaması, the indefinite compound, leaves the first noun bare and still puts the possessive on the second: su kuyusu, a water well; el lambası, a hand-lamp. This is how Turkish makes compound nouns, and it names a type rather than a specific relation. Üniversite kütüphanesi is a university library; üniversitenin kütüphanesi is the university's library. The zincirleme isim tamlaması chains them: okul bahçesinin kapısı, the gate of the school garden.

The suffix-order template

Fig. 4If you memorise one thing about Turkish morphology, memorise this. Suffixes attach in a fixed order and a word is decoded by peeling them off from the right. On the noun the order is root and derivation, then plural -lAr, then one of the six possessive suffixes -Im, -In, -(s)I, -ImIz, -InIz and -lArI, then one of the five cases, then optionally the pronominal -ki. On the verb it is root and derivation, then the voice suffixes for causative, passive, reflexive and reciprocal, then the negative -mA, then the tense or mood marker -DI, -mIş, -Iyor, -(A)r, -(y)AcAk, -mAlI or -sA, then the compound marker -(y)DI, -(y)mIş or -(y)sA, then the person ending. Two worked words show it operating: gözlükçülerimizden peels back as göz, plus -lIK, plus -CI, plus plural, plus our, plus from — from our opticians. Yazdırılmamıştı peels back as yaz, plus causative, plus passive, plus negative, plus reported past, plus narrative marker — it had not been made to be written. Reading right to left is how you parse an unseen word in Paper 1; building left to right is how you construct one in Paper 2.

Worked example

Paper 2 Section A: an English passage whose every sentence turns on the accusative or on a compound

Translate into Turkish. The government opened the new school last year. Many families in the village send their children to a school in the town. The school's library is small, but a village library is better than nothing.

The government opened the new school last year
Hükûmet geçen yıl yeni okulu açtı. Hükûmet is the subject and stays bare. Geçen yıl, last year, uses the -(y)An participle of geçmek and needs no case. Yeni okulu is the object and it is definite — the new school, a particular one — so the accusative is obligatory: okul plus -u. Açtı is the witnessed past of açmak: aç plus -DI, with the t hardened because ç is voiceless, and the vowel back unrounded. Note the word order: subject, time expression, object, verb. Turkish puts the verb last and the element immediately before it in focus.
Many families in the village send their children to a school in the town
Köydeki birçok aile çocuklarını kasabadaki bir okula gönderiyor. Köydeki is the locative köyde plus the pronominal -ki, which turns a location into a modifier: the ones in the village. Birçok aile stays singular after a quantifier — Turkish does not pluralise a noun after a number or a quantity word, so birçok aileler would be wrong. Çocuklarını is plural plus third-person possessive plus accusative, their children, definite because possessed. Kasabadaki bir okula is dative because gönderme takes the dative, and bir keeps it indefinite. Gönderiyor is the present continuous, third person, and the singular verb agrees with the singular aile.
The school's library is small
Okulun kütüphanesi küçük. This is a belirtili isim tamlaması, because it is that school's library: genitive on the first noun, possessive on the second. Compare okul kütüphanesi, which would mean a school library as a type of institution. The predicate küçük needs no copula in the present; if the register were formal you could write küçüktür, which is the -DIr form the specification's own grammar list calls the simple present aorist of the ek fiil.
But a village library is better than nothing
Ama bir köy kütüphanesi hiç yoktan iyidir. Köy kütüphanesi is the belirtisiz compound — a village library as a type, not a particular village's library — so no genitive. Comparison in Turkish uses the ablative on the standard of comparison rather than a word for than: hiç yoktan iyi, better than nothing at all, literally good from nothing. Iyidir carries -DIr because it is a general statement. The whole sentence is a good demonstration that Turkish signals comparison with a case ending where English uses a conjunction.

Result: Hükûmet geçen yıl yeni okulu açtı. Köydeki birçok aile çocuklarını kasabadaki bir okula gönderiyor. Okulun kütüphanesi küçük, ama bir köy kütüphanesi hiç yoktan iyidir.

Typical mistakes

Marking every object with the accusative because English has the word the somewhere in the sentence.
Writing odaya as odaa, or evinde as evide. The buffer consonants are obligatory.
Building a compound as bare plus bare — su kuyu — with no possessive on the second noun.
Putting the case suffix before the possessive. Order is root, plural, possessive, case, and never otherwise.

Active revision

Write ten sentences in Turkish in which the same noun appears once as an indefinite object and once as a definite object, and gloss each pair in English so the difference is explicit. Then take five English noun phrases of the form the X of the Y and five of the form an X-Y and render each as the correct kind of isim tamlaması.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Turkish (9TU0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

The verb: tense, mood, evidentiality, voice, and the compound forms Appendix 2 demands#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Appendix 2 §3–§5 — Predicative verbs, verb tenses, verbal forms, voicesPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Paper 2 marking guidance — complex language

The tense, mood and evidentiality system

Fig. 5The table is arranged in the order Appendix 2 uses, with its Turkish terminology in the first column, so that the specification's own language list can be read straight off it. The first five rows are the simple indicative moods, the next four the simple optative moods, and the last three the compound markers that stack onto them. The archiphoneme notation applies throughout: -DI surfaces as -dı, -di, -du, -dü, -tı, -ti, -tu or -tü. The two verb columns are chosen so that one has a front vowel and one a back vowel, so every cell also demonstrates harmony. The compound rows show the marker attached to a different base each time, which is the point: any of the three can attach to almost any of the nine.

Turkish has five simple indicative tenses and four simple optative moods, and Appendix 2 requires all of them in the positive, the negative, the interrogative and the negative interrogative. The indicatives are the witnessed past -DI, the reported past -mIş, the present continuous -Iyor, the aorist -(A)r and the future -(y)AcAk. The optatives are the necessitative -mAlI, the conditional -sA, the desiderative -(y)A and the imperative, which has no suffix at all in the second person singular. The aorist deserves particular attention because it has no clean English equivalent: gelir is not simply he comes but rather he is the kind of person who comes, or he will come as a matter of course, and it is the tense of proverbs, of general truths and of polite offers.

The distinction between -DI and -mIş is evidentiality, and it does not exist in English at all. Ankara’ya gitti says he went to Ankara and I vouch for it, because I saw it or otherwise take responsibility for the claim. Ankara’ya gitmiş says he went to Ankara and I did not witness it — I was told, or I have inferred it from evidence, or I have just discovered it. This is a gift to a candidate writing about research, because it lets you separate what a source claims from what you assert. It is also a trap: writing a whole essay in -mIş makes every statement second-hand, and writing a whole essay in -DI claims personal knowledge of things you cannot have witnessed. The disciplined solution is to use -DI for documented events and explicit attribution verbs for claims.

The compound moods are what Appendix 2 spends most of its space on and what the Paper 2 AO3 range grid calls conceptually challenging tenses. They are built by stacking a second marker on a first: the narrative -(y)DI, the inferential -(y)mIş and the conditional -(y)sA. Stacked onto the five indicatives and the optatives they generate gelmişti, geliyordu, gelirdi, gelecekti, gelmeliydi, gelseydi; gelmişmiş, geliyormuş, gelirmiş, gelecekmiş, gelmeliymiş; geldiyse, gelmişse, geliyorsa, gelirse, gelecekse, gelmeliyse. Gelmişti is the past perfect the grid names; gelmiş olacak is the future perfect it also names; gelse, gelirse and gelseydi are its three conditionals, and they differ in likelihood — gelirse if he comes, which he may, gelse if he were to come, gelseydi if he had come, which he did not.

Appendix 2 lists seven voices, and four of them are made by suffix. The passive is -Il after most consonants, -In after l and -n after a vowel: yazıldı, it was written; bulundu, it was found; okundu, it was read. The reflexive is -In: yıkandı, he washed himself. The reciprocal is -Iş: görüştük, we saw one another; gülüştüler, they laughed together. The causative is -DIr, -t, -Ir or -Ar depending on the verb: yazdırdı, he had it written; uyuttu, she put the child to sleep; içirdi, he made him drink. Causatives can stack, and a doubly causative verb such as yaptırttı — he had someone else have it made — is entirely normal Turkish. The passive is the single most useful of these for formal writing, because it lets you make an institution or a process the subject of a sentence.

Worked example

Paper 2 Section A: a passage in which every verb form is a decision about evidence

Translate into Turkish. According to the report, the number of students in rural schools has fallen. The ministry announced last month that it would open new boarding schools. If the plan is applied, the situation may improve; but a similar programme had been tried before, and it was abandoned.

According to the report, the number of students has fallen
Rapora göre, kırsal bölgelerdeki okullarda öğrenci sayısı azalmış. Göre is a postposition taking the dative, so rapora göre. Kırsal bölgelerdeki uses locative plus -ki. Öğrenci sayısı is a belirtisiz compound, the number of students as a quantity, so no genitive. The verb is where the work is: because the claim comes from a report and not from your own observation, -mIş is exactly right — azalmış. Writing azaldı would assert it on your own authority. This single suffix does what English needs the words according to the report to do, and using both is not redundant; it is precise.
The ministry announced last month that it would open new boarding schools
Bakanlık geçen ay yeni yatılı okullar açacağını duyurdu. Duyurmak, to announce, is an event you can document, so the witnessed past -DI is right: duyurdu. The reported clause is built the way Turkish always builds one — not with a conjunction but with a nominalised verb: açacak plus the third-person possessive plus the accusative, açacağını, which is the future participle used as a noun and marked as the definite object of duyurdu. Note the k softening to ğ before the vowel-initial possessive. English that it would open becomes one Turkish word.
If the plan is applied, the situation may improve
Plan uygulanırsa durum düzelebilir. Uygulanırsa is the passive uygulan- plus the aorist -(I)r plus the conditional -sA — the real conditional, for something that may well happen, which is the grid's gelirse type. Düzelebilir is düzel- plus the potential -(y)Abil- plus the aorist, and the potential is how Turkish says may or can. Had the English said if the plan were applied, hinting that it will not be, the correct form would have been uygulansa; had it said if the plan had been applied, uygulansaydı.
But a similar programme had been tried before, and it was abandoned
Ancak benzer bir program daha önce denenmişti ve terk edilmişti. Denenmişti is den- plus passive -In- plus -mIş plus the narrative -(y)DI: the past perfect the AO3 grid names as complex language, and the right choice because the trying happened before the announcing. Terk edilmişti is the passive of the compound verb terk etmek, again in the past perfect. Two past perfects in a row are not clumsy here; they are the sequencing that makes the paragraph's argument — this was tried, and it failed, before the new announcement was made.

Result: Rapora göre, kırsal bölgelerdeki okullarda öğrenci sayısı azalmış. Bakanlık geçen ay yeni yatılı okullar açacağını duyurdu. Plan uygulanırsa durum düzelebilir; ancak benzer bir program daha önce denenmişti ve terk edilmişti.

Typical mistakes

Using -mIş for every past event because it looks more sophisticated. It makes every claim second-hand.
Translating the aorist as a simple present. Gelir is not he is coming, which is geliyor.
Forgetting that the negative -mA sits before the tense marker: gelmedi, not geldimé.
Treating the causative as optional. Turkish uses it where English changes verb: to teach is öğretmek, the causative of öğrenmek.

Active revision

Take one verb, gitmek, and write out a full grid of every form Appendix 2 requires: five indicatives and four optatives, each in positive, negative, question and negative question, and then each of the three compound markers stacked on the five indicatives. Then write ten sentences in which switching -DI for -mIş changes the claim you are making, and gloss the change in English.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Turkish (9TU0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Participles and converbs: how Turkish builds the sentences English builds with who, which and when#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Appendix 2 §5 — Verbal nouns, participles, gerundsPearson Edexcel 9TU0 Paper 2 marking guidance — range of grammatical structures

Participles and converbs in working order

Fig. 6The first five rows are participles, which modify nouns and replace English relative clauses; the remaining rows are converbs, which modify verbs and replace English adverbial clauses. Every example is glossed so that the structure and its meaning can be memorised together, which is the only way these forms become usable under exam conditions. The table is a working subset, not the whole of Appendix 2 — the specification lists seven participles and seventeen converbs — but these are the ones that carry ordinary argumentative prose, and a candidate who controls them can construct any sentence the Paper 2 essays require.

Turkish has no relative pronoun. There is no word that does the work of who, which or that, and a clause that English hangs off such a pronoun is built in Turkish as a participle standing before the noun it modifies. The choice between the two main participles depends on one question: is the noun being modified the subject of the clause? If it is, use -(y)An — gelen adam, the man who came; toplantıya katılan öğrenciler, the students who attended the meeting. If it is not, use -DIk with a possessive suffix agreeing with the clause's own subject, and put that subject in the genitive — okuduğum kitap, the book I read; öğretmenin anlattığı konu, the subject the teacher explained. For future reference the -DIk is replaced by -(y)AcAk: gideceğim şehir, the city I shall go to.

That single rule generates most of the complexity in a Paper 1 reading passage, because Turkish loads modification in front of the noun and English loads it behind. A phrase such as geçen yıl köyden şehre göç eden ailelerin karşılaştığı sorunlar unpacks as the problems faced by the families who migrated from the village to the city last year — twelve English words after the head noun for four Turkish words before it. Reading such a phrase means finding the head noun first, which is always the last word, and then working leftwards. Writing one means resisting the temptation to build an English-shaped sentence with a conjunction; Turkish will not accept it, and a translation that tries produces exactly the mother-tongue interference the specification's own error list names as preventing meaning from being conveyed.

Converbs, which Appendix 2 calls ulaç or zarf-fiil and lists seventeen of, do the same job for adverbial clauses. -(y)ken means while: yolda geçerken, while passing on the road. -(y)ArAk means by or through doing: çalışarak kazandı, he earned it by working. -(y)Ip links two clauses with the same subject and lets the second carry the tense: eve gelip yemek yaptı, he came home and cooked. -(y)IncA and -DIğIndA both mean when: sınav bitince and sınav bittiğinde. -mAdAn means without or before: sormadan karar verdi, he decided without asking. -DIkçA means as, in the sense of the more: yaşlandıkça sabırlı oldu, he grew patient as he aged. -(A)r ... -mAz means as soon as: bitirir bitirmez.

For the AO3 range mark these forms are the cheapest sophistication available. The Paper 2 grid rewards different types of complex language, and a paragraph that links its clauses with -(y)Ip, -(y)ArAk, -DIğIndA and -mAktAnsA rather than with a string of ve is visibly doing something a weaker candidate is not. My advice is to learn six converbs properly rather than seventeen shakily, and to choose them for meaning rather than for display: -(y)ArAk when you are explaining method, -DIkçA when you are describing a trend, -mAktAnsA when you are weighing one option against another, -mAdAn when you are pointing at an omission, -(y)IncA for sequence, -(y)ken for simultaneity. Used that way they carry the argument, which is what the grid actually rewards.

Worked example

Paper 1 Section A: an unseen passage built almost entirely of participles

Translate into English. Son yıllarda köylerden büyük şehirlere göç eden ailelerin karşılaştığı en ciddi sorun, çocuklarının okula uyum sağlayamamasıdır. Uzmanların hazırladığı bir raporda, taşımalı eğitimden yararlanan öğrencilerin devamsızlık oranının daha yüksek olduğu belirtiliyor.

Find the head noun of the first phrase and read leftwards
Son yıllarda köylerden büyük şehirlere göç eden ailelerin karşılaştığı en ciddi sorun. The head is sorun, problem, and everything before it modifies it. Working leftwards: en ciddi, the most serious; karşılaştığı is -DIk plus possessive on karşılaşmak, to encounter, with its agent ailelerin in the genitive — that the families encounter. Göç eden is -(y)An on göç etmek, so families who have migrated; köylerden büyük şehirlere göç eden, who have migrated from villages to big cities; son yıllarda, in recent years. English reassembles it in the opposite order: the most serious problem faced by families who have migrated from villages to big cities in recent years.
Unpack the predicate, which is a nominalisation
çocuklarının okula uyum sağlayamamasıdır. Sağlayamama is the verbal noun of sağlayamamak, the negative potential of sağlamak, so a failure to be able to achieve. Uyum sağlamak is a fixed collocation, to adapt or to fit in, and it takes the dative, hence okula. Çocuklarının is plural plus possessive plus genitive, of their children, the subject of the nominalised verb. The whole thing then takes a third-person possessive and the copular -DIr: is that their children cannot adapt to school. Rendering it as a that-clause in English is right, because English has no comfortable noun for the concept.
The second sentence, and the two -DIk participles inside it
Uzmanların hazırladığı bir raporda, taşımalı eğitimden yararlanan öğrencilerin devamsızlık oranının daha yüksek olduğu belirtiliyor. Uzmanların hazırladığı bir rapor is a report prepared by experts, -DIk with the agent in the genitive. Taşımalı eğitim is a fixed term for the system of bussing pupils to a school in another settlement; yararlanan is -(y)An on yararlanmak, which governs the ablative, so pupils who make use of it. Devamsızlık oranı is a compound, the absence rate. Olduğu is -DIk on olmak, the standard way Turkish reports a proposition, and belirtiliyor is the passive of belirtmek: it is stated in a report that the rate is higher.
Write the English so it does not read as a crib
The temptation is to keep the Turkish order, which produces the villages-from big cities-to migrated families kind of English that a marker recognises instantly. Break the long noun phrase into a main clause plus a relative clause, put the head noun early, and let the modification follow. Also note that Turkish uses the present belirtiliyor where English prefers a simple present or a present perfect: a report prepared by experts states, not is stating.

Result: The most serious problem faced by families who have migrated from villages to big cities in recent years is that their children are unable to adapt to school. A report prepared by experts states that the rate of absence is higher among pupils who make use of bussed education.

Typical mistakes

Inventing a relative pronoun by using ki as though it were English that. Ki exists but is a different, borrowed construction.
Using -(y)An where the head noun is the object: writing okuyan kitap for the book I read instead of okuduğum kitap.
Omitting the possessive on the -DIk participle, so the clause has no subject.
Stringing clauses with ve throughout an essay when a converb would show range at no cost in accuracy.

Active revision

Take five English sentences containing a relative clause with who and five with which or that, and render each in Turkish, saying in each case why the participle you chose is the right one. Then rewrite a paragraph of your own Turkish prose replacing every ve with a converb, and check that the meaning has not shifted.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Turkish (9TU0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

References & sources

Sources

Pearson Edexcel

Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Turkish (9TU0) specification

Grammar and translation: Paper 1 Section A, Paper 2 Section A, and the whole of Appendix 2

5 sections~37 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 2 · Advanced 2

Grammar and translation: Paper 1 Section A, Paper 2 Section A, and the whole of Appendix 2

Key points

Paper 1 Section A: translating a passage on the world of work, segment by segment

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: building four words correctly from the root outwards

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: an English passage whose every sentence turns on the accusative or on a compound

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: a passage in which every verb form is a decision about evidence

Key points

Paper 1 Section A: an unseen passage built almost entirely of participles

Sources

Grammar and translation: Paper 1 Section A, Paper 2 Section A, and the whole of Appendix 2

Key points

Paper 1 Section A: translating a passage on the world of work, segment by segment

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: building four words correctly from the root outwards

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: an English passage whose every sentence turns on the accusative or on a compound

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: a passage in which every verb form is a decision about evidence

Key points

Paper 1 Section A: an unseen passage built almost entirely of participles

Sources