Turkish Vowel Harmony

Let’s imagine Turkish words are like little Lego sets. Every time you add a piece (a suffix), it has to fit the color pattern of the piece before it. Otherwise, it looks weird and doesn’t feel right.

In Turkish, these “colors” are the vowels (a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, ü). And the rule is: new pieces (suffixes) should “match” the vowel colors in the word so everything sounds smooth together.

Here’s the basic idea:

Step 1: There are two vowel groups:

• Back vowels: a, ı, o, u → These sound “deeper” in your throat.

• Front vowels: e, i, ö, ü → These sound “lighter” and “closer” to your lips.

Step 2: Turkish suffixes change their vowels to match the last vowel of the word.

If a word ends in a back vowel (like a, o), the suffix uses a back vowel too. If it ends in a front vowel (like e, ü), the suffix uses a front vowel.

Example:

• Ev (house) ends in e → add -ler to make it plural: evler (houses)

• Kitap (book) ends in a → add -lar: kitaplar (books)

Same suffix, but different vowel in it depending on the word!

Elma - Elmalar

Kalem - Kalemler

Kadın - Kadınlar

Silgi - Silgiler

Doktor - Doktorlar

Aktör - Aktörler

Bulut - Bulutlar

Üzüm - Üzümler

Why this happens?

Because Turkish wants to flow smoothly. The mouth doesn’t like to jump from a deep sound to a light one—it wants to keep things smooth. So Turkish lets the suffix “blend in” with the word.

So basically, vowel harmony is like matching outfits. If the word is wearing blue, the suffix has to wear blue too. If the word is wearing red, the suffix follows that. That way, the sentence walks down the runway in style.

Let me know if you want a visual or chart for this too!

Plural Conjugation Machine!