①A Turkish proverb says. “The more languages you know, the more people you are!” There are about 35 languages spoken in Turkey, but 90% of the people speak Turkish.
②Turkish uses an alphabet that is not strange to many English speakers, but when you look at Turkish spelling, you may find it so difficult. There are 29 letters in the Turkish alphabet and six of them—c, g. t, ō, s and ü—aren’t in the English alphabet. For example, all those marks in a word like gūnes gōzlügü (“sunglasses”) can really daunt you!
③But luckily, Turkish pronunciation isn’t always as hard as it seems. In Turkish, each letter is pronounced only one way. So it can become quite easy to pronounce a new Turkish word.
④Turkish is an agglutinative language. That means it puts pieces together to make words. In Turkish, this practice can make some very long words. You can add suffixes to most Turkish root words. For example, the word ev means “house”. Add the ending ler to make evler, “houses”. Then add den, meaning “from”, to make evlerden, “from the houses”. Or add li, meaning “having” and you get evli, “having a house”. The suffix ci can mean “one who does something”. Gazete is “newspaper”; gazeteci means “a newspaper writer”.
⑤There are more facts about Turkish for you to learn. You’ll find that learning about it helps open up door to a different culture.
【小题1】What does the underlined word “daunt” probably mean?| A．make people more excited | B．make people more tired |
| C．make people less confident | D．make people less afraid |
| A．Turkish people can speak more than one language. |
| B．Turkish uses an alphabet the same as English. |
| C．A Turkish letter can have different pronunciations. |
| D．Turkish words can get long by adding suffixes to root words. |
| A．sarkiler | B．sarkici | C．sarkili | D．sarkilerden |
A． | B． | C． | D． |
| A．To help people learn about Turkish. | B．To ask people to visit Turkey. |
| C．To teach people how to speak Turkish. | D．To advise people to save Turkish. |
