How I Easily Learned Turkish Comparatives And Superlatives

It's amazing what you find just by searching for terms in your target language. I don't even remember now what it was that I was originally looking for, but I did my search in Turkish and one of the results that came back was on the web site Hürriyet.

The reason I don't remember what I was searching for is because once I found this web site, I ended up just digging and digging, excited at all the new things I can learn about Turkish without any instruction.

Just look at that home page, full of important vocabulary, such as:

• Ekonomi - Economy
• Spor - Sports
• Kültür - Sanat - Culture - Art
• Hava Durumu - Weather
• Sinema - Cinema
• En İyi On - Top 10

And that's just the navigation, before I get to reading actual articles! Who needs a book for vocabulary? Just use the language and you'll learn a lot!

Once again, there are cognates that make things easier: kültür, spor, planet, ekonomi, sinema, teknoloji, astroloji... It's easy to feel your confidence grow when you immediately recognize several words.

Superlatives

One thing I find particularly interesting, though, is En İyi On. As a phrase, Google translates it as Top 10, but there are three words there... what's that all about?

Actually, I recognize iyi, which means good, and on which means ten... so we can probably assume that en is most, and that en iyi means something like most good (ie, best). And in fact, that's exactly what Google says: best.

If that's the case, it will make things much easier, since we don't have to learn superlative forms of adverbs and adjectives! I think the best way to verify that is by looking up superlatives in Sesli Sözlük. Here's what we learn: worst is en kötü, biggest is en büyük, and youngest is en genç. That's pretty convenient.

Comparatives

Gosh, wouldn't it be convenient if this worked for comparatives too? Just think of all the extra vocabulary I wouldn't have to learn! Well, it's easy to test this too, in the same way.

Back over at Sesli Sözlük again, we find that younger is daha genç, bigger is daha büyük, better is daha iyi, and worse is daha kötü.

That's pretty convenient! There is no need to learn words like more, less, bigger, smaller, faster, slower, best, worst, ugliest, etc. Just use the modifiers daha (more) and en (most) in front of them!