Turkish 101 - Word order

Word order is the order in which the subject, object and the verb are placed in a sentence. Turkish is considered to be an SOV language, meaning that subjects precede objects and objects precede verbs. However you should keep in mind that Turkish is also very flexible about its word order. Even though there is the usual construction, most of the time you can put whatever you want wherever you want, but you will change the emphasis by doing that.

Subject first Ben seni seviyorum. Ben seviyorum seni.
Object first Seni ben seviyorum.Seni seviyorum ben.
Verb firstSeviyorum ben seni.Seviyorum seni ben.

While all of these mean I love you, the emphasis differs. The emphasized words are in bold.

It is important to know the first three sentences since they emphasize different things, but you can always safely use the SOV construction without a problem. However, be ready to see other forms used by native speakers.

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