Comparatives & Superlatives in Turkish Language

Turkish Comparatives

This is maybe the easiest subject for Turkish learners. How come?

*Because there is no

• exception
• changing letter
• strange vowel harmony rule
• connection letter

What we have then?

All you need to do is adding the word "daha" 

and sometimes you do not even need this word !

here we go;
büyük: big
Bu ev daha büyük. This house is bigger.
Bu ev şu evden daha büyük. This house is bigger than that house.
/Bu ev şu evden büyük.
*The decision is yours, it really is okay not to use "daha" as long as you say what you compare with.

Ben uzunum. I am tall.
Ben daha uzunum. I am taller.
Ben senden daha uzunum. I am taller than you.
*And we may skip the word 'daha' and say;
Ben senden uzunum. I am taller than you.

Just like the English language we use than, it sounds exactly the same, although we write den.
Keeping this in mind, we need to know that this suffix -den can change and may become
dan,tan,ten also;

Bu araba pahalı. This car is expensive.
O araba daha pahalı. That car is more expensive.
O araba bu arabadan daha pahalı.

kitap-kitaptan  saat-saatten
(book)            (clock)

How we will know?
If the word ends with f s t k ç ş h p and the last vowel is a,ı,o,u --> tan
                                                                                 e,i,ö,ü --> ten
If the word does not end with one of those consonants and the last vowel is a,ı,o,u --> dan
                                                                                                             e,i,ö,ü --> den

Ben annemden daha kısayım. I am shorter than my mother.
The last letter is m (not one of f s t k ç ş h p)  and, the last vowel is e

Market okuldan daha yakın. The store is closer than the school.
Ayşe bu bebekten daha güzel. Ayşe is more beautiful than this baby.
Aşktan daha büyük bir duygu yok. There is no feeling greater than love.

Super Easy Superlatives of Turkish 

And for the superlatives we have another word; "en"

en güzel kız - the most beautiful girl
en uzun adam - the tallest man
en çalışkan öğrenci - the most hardworker student
en kalabalık cadde - the most crowded street

As you see, we just put the word en in the beginning, the rest is the same, we have no suffix or no other rule.

*** Tomorrow we will learn more about the Turkish Adjectives ***
We will learn to say "the + adjective in all forms + one" such as the good one, the better one, the best one in and out of sentence.

Until tomorrow you might find these lessons useful to learn some more uses of adjectives.
http://blog.learnturkisheasy.com/2012/08/en-most-width.html
http://www.learnturkisheasy.com/grammar/i-am-good-at



Update...13.11.2012
extra information about the word saat (clock)
In an original Turkish word we can not see two vowels next to each other. Some old people already pronounce this word as if there is a "h" between them (sahat). Upon the rule we need to add -tan but when we read the word-saat the second "a" sounds different than the normal "a" sound and "-ten" fits better.