Turkish Alphabet and Pronunciation

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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.

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.

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:

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.

Turkish Soft G (Ğ)

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:

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.

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