A Turkish dictionary app that explains the suffixes
Most Turkish dictionaries only know the bare headword. Ekle starts from the word as you actually met it — gördüğümde, evlerimizden — finds the entry underneath and shows you how the word was built.
Why an ordinary dictionary fails on Turkish
Turkish builds words by stacking suffixes onto a stem. One verb or noun turns up in dozens of different surface forms, and a printed or online dictionary lists only the stem: görmek, not gördüğümde. To look the word up you first have to know where the stem ends, which is exactly what a learner cannot yet do.
Ekle does that step for you. Type the form you met and it returns the dictionary entry, the stem and every suffix on the word, each with a grammatical label. You see what the word means and why it looks the way it does.
What you get when you look up a word
- The entry: headword, part of speech and numbered meanings, in the language you choose — English, Russian, German or French.
- The breakdown: gör-düğ-üm-de split into stem and suffixes, colour-coded in a fixed order, each suffix named (participle, first-person possessive, locative).
- Examples and sound: example sentences, IPA, and pronunciation from the Turkish voice built into your iPhone.
- Phrases and idioms as entries of their own, not only single words.
- Forgiving search: typing gordugumde without the special letters still finds gördüğümde.
- Reverse lookup: type an English, Russian, German or French word and Ekle lists the Turkish words that carry that meaning, so it works in both directions.
Offline, with no account to look things up
The dictionary, the table of roughly 170,000 common word forms and the morphology all ship inside the app. Looking a word up never needs a connection and never needs an account, the free tier has no daily limit on lookups, and the words you search for stay on your phone.
Because the analysis was computed in advance with Zemberek, an open-source Turkish morphological analyzer, nothing is generated at lookup time. The same word always gives the same answer.
What it does not do
Ekle is a dictionary and a review tool, not a sentence translator and not a full course. The form table covers the most frequent Turkish word forms; a very rare form may not be found, and Ekle then offers close matches instead. Turkish forms can also be ambiguous, and the app shows the most likely reading.
It is an iPhone app (iOS 16.4 or later). There is no Android version and no website lookup. The app interface is in English and Russian; the meanings come in English, Russian, German or French.
From a lookup to a word you keep
Saving a word takes one tap, and you can save as many as you like. Saved words go into spaced repetition; the free tier has a daily review limit. Saving and reviewing use a free Sign in with Apple, so your words and streak follow you to a new phone.
Premium ($9.99 a month or $49.99 a year, US prices; the App Store shows your own) lifts the review limit and adds the full conjugation and declension tables, an explanation of what every suffix does, the A1–B2 grammar reference, a Reader for pasted text and every frequency deck.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Ekle a Turkish–English dictionary?
- It is a Turkish dictionary with meanings in English, Russian, German or French — you pick one. You can search from Turkish, in any inflected form, or from your own language to find the Turkish word. It does not translate whole sentences.
- Does the dictionary work offline?
- Yes. The dictionary and the word-form table are stored on the device, so lookups work on a plane or with no signal.
- Do I need an account?
- Not to look words up. Saving words and spaced-repetition reviews use a free Sign in with Apple.
- Is it free?
- Lookup, the suffix breakdown with labels and the shareable breakdown card are free. Premium costs $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year in US prices, and adds the full tables, explanations, grammar reference and unlimited reviews.
- Can I use it on Android or on the web?
- No. Ekle is an iPhone app for iOS 16.4 or later.
- How is this different from Google Translate or Tureng?
- Those translate or list the words you give them. Ekle first works out which dictionary word your form comes from and shows the suffixes, so you can read a form you have never seen before. It is a companion to them, not a replacement for a sentence translator.