hello and thanks for your interest !
Maybe I should try to explain what I mean with similarities.
the logic behind the two languages seems the same to me. not only the syntax and the same way of using the verbs, also the whole construction of the sentences. it is very strange that latin, as the "mother" of so many european languages, has a totally different syntax than the modern tongues, but is similar to turkish, that belongs to the altaic language family. I will try to show what I am talking about
:
e.g.:
gelmek - to come ("mek" ist the stem)
gel-iyor-um - I come
gel-iyor-sun - you come
gel-iyor - he/she/it comes
gel-iyor-uz - we come
gel-iyor-sunuz - you come
gel-iyor-lar - they come
"iyor" stands for present tense
everything you can possibly do to a verb is added at the end, there are no auxillary verbs or anything like it. for example:
gel-e-me-(y)-eceğ-im - I won't be able to come
gel(stem) + e(possibility) + me(negation) +eceğ(future) + im(1.person)
and that goes on and on, all the tenses,conditions,personal endings are added at the end.
more examples:
Istanbul'a / gittiğim / gün / yağmur / yağıyordu.
(it was raining the day I went to Istanbul.)
literally:
to Istanbul / me gone / day / rain / was raining
bunu al-a-maz-dı-m
(I couldn't have taken it.)
literally:
that take-possibility-negation-past tense-personal ending.
I would discribe latin as a quite "concentrated" language and turkish is just the same. also the use of so many genitives and gerunds. what we would express with a contact clause is expressed with those two grammatical forms in turkish. and the old SOP rule in latin works perfect for turkish,too.
even the personal endings and the cases are the same. although the five years of latin at school were a nightmare for me, it helped me a lot with turkish. while all the other students had to get used to the completely different syntax and way of thinking in turkish, I kind of knew it already from latin. locative? ablative? gerunde? piece of cake !
my latin teacher would certainly start to cry if he ever read this
.
of course latin is much more complicated than turkish. Thank god there are no articles and genders of the words!
but still, it is strange that obviously no one ever noticed this before. maybe this similarity only appears to me. anyway, it helped!
greetings from turkey
zippy