You are sitting in a small café in Istanbul. At the table next to you, two friends are talking. You have been studying Turkish for a while now. You understand most of the words. You follow the grammar. And yet, something feels slippery. Every few sentences, there are words you recognize but cannot quite place. “Şey… yani… bilmiyorum işte.” You know "şey" means “thing.” You know, “yani” means “I mean.” But here, they don’t mean anything in the way your textbooks taught you. Th

If you are learning Turkish, you will eventually come across the name Evliya Çelebi . Usually in passing. A name in a textbook. A street sign. A footnote. He is often introduced as “a famous Ottoman traveler.” That description is correct, but it barely touches what made him extraordinary. Evliya Çelebi was not simply someone who moved through places. He moved through language itself . Through how people spoke, feared, exaggerated, joked, and believed. He listened to words whi

People who start learning Turkish often ask a similar question at some point: “Is Turkish related to Arabic?” The question usually comes from observation rather than analysis. Shared words, Ottoman texts written in Arabic script, religious vocabulary, and familiar sounds all create the impression of a deeper connection. That impression is understandable. Linguistically, however, it is not correct. Turkish and Arabic are not related languages. What they share is history and co

People often ask where they can find a Turkish tutor online. I usually pause before answering, because the real issue is rarely where. What learners are really asking is something deeper: what kind of teaching will actually help me move forward? Many people don’t struggle because Turkish is too difficult. They struggle because they spend time with explanations that never quite settle. They repeat correct sentences, receive corrections, and move on, but something remains unsta

When we talk about Turkish today, we often think of Istanbul, Anatolia, or modern Türkiye. But the roots of the Turkish language and the Turkic peoples stretch much further east, into the vast, wind-swept grasslands of Central Asia. Long before cities, borders, or nation-states, this geography shaped how Turks lived, moved, and spoke. For anyone learning Turkish, this is not just background information. It is the key to understanding why the language feels the way it does. Th