Introduction
Merhaba! The Turkish Studies Program of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University offers Turkish language courses at all levels (elementary, intermediate, advanced), as well as other courses on Turkish culture, and literature. All language courses of the Turkish Studies Program are open as electives to students from all faculties. Students completing four half-courses of Turkish Language courses beyond the first-year level and/or half-courses taught primarily in Turkish can receive printed citations along with their diplomas. To learn more on Citations in Foreign Languages click here.

An undergraduate degree in the Turkish program may be obtained in combination with other programs. Undergraduate students with advanced standing have the option of applying for a joint A.B./A.M. degree. All concentrators must complete at least four semesters of a departmental language. To further this goal, as well as to provide prolonged exposure to the civilizations of the region, the Department encourages a junior year abroad in Turkey, provided that course work completed abroad falls within the concentration and is approved by the student's advisor.

The Turkish Program has several activities jointly coordinated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. A lecture series on Modern Turkey and another with topics on the Ottoman Empire are taking place at the CMES. Turkish films with English subtitles are regularly screened for Harvard affiliates. Historians of the Ottoman Empire, an on-line bio-bibliographical encyclopedia project, was launched by the faculty members of the Turkish Studies Program in 2003.

Basic Turkish is a two-year program that comprises Elementary Turkish (a full-year course; indivisible for credit) and Intermediate Turkish 120a (Fall) and 120b (Spring). To attend Intermediate Turkish students must successfully complete Elementary Turkish or equivalent. This is also the minimum requirement for admission into Ottoman Turkish 140 courses. Ph.D. candidates should demonstrate a command of at least advanced intermediate level of Modern Turkish from the outset and normally start with Advanced Turkish 130a and 130 b courses.

Students pursuing a graduate degree in Turkish Studies are required to meet the general graduate requirements for all students pursuing degrees in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

Some Facts About Turkish Language

General

Turkish, a member of the Turkic subdivision of the Altaic language family and the successor of Ottoman-Turkish, is a so-called agglutinative language. That means many suffixes can be attached to words, such as reflexive, passive and case endings. Some words may have meanings, that would correspond to long sentences in English for example:

Amerika-li-las¸-tir-ama-dik-lar-imiz-dan-sin
'You are one of those, whom we could not make American'.

This is an exaggerated example, but putting the suffixes into the right order is one of the difficulties for learners. But the good news: There is neither gender nor definite articles in Turkish! And an English speaker would be able to recognize a remarkable number of words borrowed from French and English. Another peculiarity of Turkish is its vowel harmony. Generally, the vowels of a word must be either back or front, and the vowels of suffixes attached to them usually adjust themselves.

Ottoman-Turkish was written with the Arabic script. Changing the Arabic script was a much discussed issue in the second half of the 19th century. The change into the Latin alphabet came in 1928 along with many other reforms in Turkey. Some letters had diacritics added, such as 'ç' (/ch/) and the unique letter 'yumus¸ak g' or the 'soft g'. The letters q, x and, w are not used in the Modern Turkish alphabet.

Today, the standard high Turkish is referred to as Istanbul Türkçesi, or Istanbul Turkish. Turkish is spoken by the natives of Turkey as a mother tongue (~60 million people), and a significant number of Turks living outside of Turkey (Cyprus, Balkans, Europe). Other modern Turkic languages have many common features with Turkey Turkish, be it in grammar or lexically. Especially Gagauz (spoken in Moldova), Azeri (spoken in Azerbaijan), and Turkmen (spoken in Iraq, Iran, Turkmenistan) are close to Turkey Turkish. The mastery of Turkey Turkish is certainly a key to learning other Turkic languages as well.

Ottoman Summer School
For more information about the Harvard-Koç University Intensive Ottoman & Turkish Summer School in Turkey, Cunda / Ayvalik - Turkey, please click here.

Faculty:
Hakan Karateke,   Senior Preceptor in Ottoman and Modern Turkish

Helga Anetshofer,  Preceptor in Ottoman Turkish and Other Turkic Languages

Affiliated Faculty:
Cemal Kafadar, Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies