Merhaba

When adding a suufix begining with i to a word the hard / soft rule applies..

eg okul (school) okulum. Okul is hard so the i changes to u

in the word beautiful  ...güzel when adding, my (im) the i remains an i .

Why didn´t it change to ü as the last vowel in güzel is e (soft vowel).

I hope my question makes sense.

Mike

Hi Mike,

There are a few different terms used to separate the Turkish vowels.

The first group [a ı o u] is called hard, the ´a undotted´ group or back vowels

The second group [e i ö ü] is called soft, the ´e dotted´ group or front vowels.

The vowels can be further split into upper/high and lower/low mouth sounds.

Have a look at the diagram of the mouth on the following link, which attempts to explain where the sound is generated. Click here

So back to your question. Because of this further distinction in where and how the sound is produced, we group the rounded vowels [o,u] and [ö,ü]. We also group [a,ı] and [e,i] and this forms the basis of which vowel the suffix will use. Clear as mud? Hopefully not, but just memorise the rules below. 

There are 2 types of vowel harmony rule, depending on the suffix type. Click here for the rules.

Basically one set of rules for harmony (a/e harmony) is used for plurals, future tense, and directional (to/from/in on at) suffixes.

The second set of rules (ı/i/u/ü harmony) is used for pronouns, past tense, suffixing the object of the sentence (like saying ´the´ in English), and the case of ownership (genitive case)

In the end you will hopefully learn and remember the combinations, and it will slowly make sense. 

Thanks Henry

Mud actually seems clear compared to this. I will have to keep working at it.

Mike