Word Order

The verb usually goes at the end of a sentence. The basic word order in Turkish is therefore the woman the book read (subject-object-verb).

For example:

Kadın kitabı okudu. The woman read the book.

This word order is not written in stone. It's flexible. You can alter the order to emphasize a particular element. You put the element you want to emphasize directly in front of the verb. If you want to stress that it was the woman (as opposed to the man) who read the book, you can say:

Kitabı kadın okudu. The woman read the book.

As a rule of thumb, you place adjectives and adverbs directly in front of the elements which they describe. So you put the word big (büyük) in front of the woman if the woman is big, and in front of the boob if the book is big:

Büyük kadın kitabı okudu. (literally: the big woman the book read)

Kadın büyük kitabı okudu. (literally:the woman the big book read)

You put adverbs (for example, quickly) in front of the verb as they tell us more about the verb.

Kadın kitabı çabuk okudu. (iterally: the woman the book quickly read)

If there is more than one adverb in a sentence, those who tell us when usually go before those which tell us how or why.