Exceptions to Turkish Vowel Harmony Rules - Perhaps Turkish is Not so "Logical" Afterall?
While most people learning Turkish feel that despite it's challenges, Turkish is a very logical language, meaning there are clear and easy to follow rules; there are some unexpected curveballs coming to any one studying Turkish, and these exceptions to vowel harmony are among them.
Vowel harmony is one of the first things taught to students learning Turkish, and rightfully so, as it's a core foundational concept. However, instructors teaching Turkish language classes don't always mention that there are exceptions to the vowel harmony rules when they introduce the concept. Moreover, few mention that vowel harmony is a phenomenon sought and observed ONLY in suffixation in Turkish. There are two cases where a normally harmonizing suffix would break the rule:
(i) The vowel of a suffix may become harmonized as a front vowel even where a loanword does not have a front vowel in the last syllable:
"hakikat-siz" (without truth) – "disloyal"
"bahs-i" (the topic, accusative) – "the topic"
"harb-in" (of the war, genitive) – "of the war"
"kalp-ler" (hearts, plural) – "hearts"
(ii) This regularly occurs in loanwords that end in a palatal 'l':
"gol-ü" (his/her goal, third person singular possessive) – "his/her goal"
"sol-ün" (of the ‘note G’) – cf. "sol-un" (of the left)
"etol-den" (from the scarf, ablative) – "from the scarf"
"hal-im" (my condition, first person singular possessive) – "my condition"
