Turkish Alphabet and Pronunciation
Turkish Lessons » Speaking Turkish in 30 Days
Want to learn the Turkish Alphabet? Watch this free Turkish lesson to learn the letters and the pronunciation of the Turkish Alphabet. Be sure to download the Course PDF and follow along with all the lessons.
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Turkish Vowel Harmony
The first thing to know about Turkish is that it uses a modified version of the Latin alphabet. There are 29 letters in the Turkish alphabet. Inside these 29 letters, there are 8 vowels. Vowels are categorized according to the position of the tongue and shape of the mouth. We categorize vowels because it is an important aspect of Vowel Harmony. You will learn about Vowel Harmony the next day. Let’s take a look at all the vowels in the Turkish alphabet. I’ll describe everything that you see in the chart in our next lesson, don’t worry.
| Back (Unrounded) | Aa | Iı |
| Back (Rounded) | Oo | Uu |
| Front (Unrounded) | Ee | İi |
| Front (Rounded) | Öö | Üü |
It is important to know that Turkish has long vowels as well. They are basically the same vowels pronounced in a long way. Unfortunately, there are no indicators to see whether a vowel is short or long. The only way to know is by opening a dictionary with IPA symbols and see their written pronunciation.
Turkish Consonant Assimilation
Turkish is a phonetical language and every letter you’ll see in the alphabet has only one reading. Some of them will sound similar to the English sounds but there are some that may sound different. Like Vowels, we also categorize consonants according to how they are voiced. Consonants are categorized because it is essential for Consonant Assimilation.
| Voiced Consonants |
| b,d,g,v,z,c,ğ,j,l,m,n,r,y |
| Voiceless Consonants |
| p,t,k,s,ş,ç,h,f |
The pronunciation of most consonant sounds are similar to that in English. The only exceptions are the “Çç, Ğğ, İi, Şş, Üü” sounds. You will hear all the pronunciations of these sounds in just a moment. The “Ğğ” (Yumuşak G/Soft G) sound has no sound, it only lengthens the vowel that it follows.
Turkish Letter Pronunciation
Now, let’s see all the letters of the Turkish alphabet in action:
| A | a | u as in uncle |
| B | b | b as in bed |
| C | c | j as in jet |
| Ç | ç | ch as in chance |
| D | d | d as in day |
| E | e | e as in end |
| F | f | f as in fat |
| G | g | g as in get |
| Ğ | ğ | makes preceding vowel long |
| H | h | h as in hay |
| I | ı | e as in open |
| İ | i | i as in finish |
| J | j | su as in measure |
| K | k | k as in king |
| L | l | l as in lemon |
| M | m | m as in mess |
| N | n | n as in net |
| O | o | o as in oat |
| Ö | ö | i as in bird (British) |
| P | p | p as in pet |
| R | r | r as in red |
| S | s | s as in said |
| Ş | ş | sh as in share |
| T | t | t as in take |
| U | u | oo as in wood |
| Ü | ü | u as in cute |
| V | v | we as in wet |
| Y | y | y as in yet |
| Z | z | z as in zip |
Letters Not Used in Turkish
You might have noticed that the Turkish alphabet doesn’t have the Xx and Ww letters. When we want to translate and pronounce foreign words that have these letter the Xx is usually written as iks and the Ww is written as Vv.
It is also important to note that Turkish doesn’t have two lettered sounds (consonant clusters) like th, ch, sh, wh sounds you would see in English. Every letter is pronounced in Turkish.
Most English speakers mispronounce the letter Iı with İi. Look at the word examples again and review it as much as possible.
The “Soft G” in Turkish
As I mentioned before, the Ğğ (Soft G) sound is not pronounced but used after a vowel sound like Aa, Ee, Iı, İi, Oo, Öö, Uu, Üü to make the sound longer.
Let’s see some examples:
| Ağaç | Beğen | Doğu | Öğlen |
| Uğraş | Iğdır | Ciğer | Düğüm |
Now that you know how to pronounce the letters in the Turkish alphabet, you can immediately start practicing by reading things written in Turkish or by trying to listen to someone speaking in Turkish and trying to write the words they’ve spoken on a piece of paper.
You’ve come to the end of this lesson!
I hope you liked this free Turkish grammar lesson. This lesson belongs to the video course named Speaking Turkish in 30 Days. You can watch the rest of the lessons by clicking the link.
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Hello Gökberk,
Thank you so much for this website and for sharing all of your knowledge. It’s very much appreciated.
I am a little confused about the sound you list for the letter “a”. You say it sounds like the “u” in uncle. To my ears, as a native English speaker and an English language teacher, this is more of a schwa sound, only stressed. I’ve seen on other sites where the Turkish “a” is represented as the “a” in father. And I’ve also seen it represented as the “a” sound in after. All three of these are distinctly different vowel sounds in American English. And I feel the “u” sound in uncle is not what I hear when I listen to Turkish speakers say this sound. Can you clarify? Thank you for your help.
Merhaba!
The Turkish “A” sound has three different readings and I didn’t mention that (sorry about that). If the “A” is in the first syllable like “masa” or “halı” it’s pronounced like the /ə/ (Schwa) sound. The “A” sound present elsewhere like the second “A” in “masa” or “sıra” will be pronounced like the /ʌ/ (uh) (father) sound. Depending on the person (dialect) it can also be pronounced like the /a/ sound (Open Front) eg “Kanı” (very slow vehicle – its a long vowel here).
I’m currently making a “Turkish From Zero” course and I’ll start from the Turkish Sounds and talk about all the variations, allophones, and more. This course is my first course so it’s pretty old. I hope my above explanation was sufficient for you. Do let me know if you still don’t understand it.