Plurals in Turkish - Çokluk Eki

Let us take a look at how we can make words plural. It is the same like English in the sense that it comes at the end of the word.

The letters that correspond to s , es or ies in English for plurality are lar and ler.

Let us see this in play.

You might be wondering when do we use ler and when do we use lar?

In Turkish, for ease of pronunciation we pay attention to the last vowel of the word being in harmony with the suffix added.

📌 If the last vowel is either a , ı ,o ,u then lar is added to the word to make it plural.

📌 If the last vowel is either e, i, ö ü then ler is added to the word to make it plural.

That’s why Cars is Arabalar and Flowers is Çiçekler.

Using “ler” and “lar” with Numbers

When a word is preceded by a number in Turkish, we do not use the suffixes -lar and -ler.

Five Books → Beş kitaplar ❌ → Beş kitap ✅

Why is that? It is because the number beş is already enough to indicate it is plural in Turkish grammar so it is wrong to add suffix to the word.

📌 You will probably be tempted to say "dört arabalar" instead of "dört araba". It takes conscious effort to avoid not adding the "lar/ler". It will eventually become a habit after sometime.

Thanks for reading!

Written by

Abbas Abdelila

@abbasabdelila