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Lesson 78 © Turkish Tea Time

turkishteatime.com
The Turkish Alphabet Made with love.
The building blocks of Turkish, and the easiest part of the language.
Every letter makes one sound and always makes the same sound.
Thanks, Turkish!

The alphabet. Noobie

Dialog

1 | Alfabe ABCÇ

2 | Alfabe DEFG

3 | Alfabe Ğ HIİ

4 | Alfabe JKL M

5 | Alfabe NO Ö P

6 | Alfabe RSŞT

7 | Alfabe UÜ VYZ

Dialog Translation

1 | Alfabe ABCÇ

2 | Alfabe DEFG

3 | Alfabe Ğ HIİ
3 | Alfabe Ğ HIİ

4 | Alfabe JKL M

5 | Alfabe NO Ö P

6 | Alfabe RSŞT

7 | Alfabe UÜ VYZ

Language Points

The Turkish Alphabet

The Turkish alphabet is wonderfully, delightfully easy. Since it was invented in the 20th century, it had an entire
history of other alphabets' mistakes to learn from.

Why is it so easy? It's perfectly phonetic: one letter makes one sound and always makes that sound. There are no
silent letters (except for the one, dedicated letter that is always silent), and there are no sound combinations. For
example, English creates all kinds of new sounds when two letters are next to each other: like sh and ch. Turkish
thought that was silly and decided to give those sounds letters of their own. This means that after studing for only
a couple hours, you can correctly pronounce any written Turkish word you will ever see - which is pretty cool when
you consider English has words like phlegm and psycho.

There are 29 letters - 7 are special to Turkish (ç, ş, ğ, ü, ö, İ, and ı) and 8 are vowels.

The Turkish alphabet is a fascinating case of history in itself. For most of its history, Turkish was written using the
Arabic script - which made a lot of sense given the territory of the Ottoman Empire, the influence of Islam, and the
heavy incorporation of Arabic and Persian words. In 1928, as part of his sweeping reforms, Ataturk commissioned
a new alphabet based on the Latin script, primarily as a political move to realign the new Turkish republic with
secular Europe.

The Names of Turkish Letters

It's often convenient to be able to refer to Turkish letters by their names. For example, if you need to spell a
password or name for someone.

The name of the vowel is its sound. Say the vowel, that's its name. Easy.
The name of consonants are the letter plus an e. So the name of B is pronounced be (bay, in English). The name
R is re (ray, in English). When writing letters in sentences, just write the letter - don't write be or re.

Cevap A veya B? (pronounced: a veya be)


Response A or B?

Şifre "Ç A R Ş I." (pronounced: çe a re şe ı)


The password is spelled "Ç A R Ş I."

Soft G

There actually is one silent letter in Turkish. But that's okay - it's always silent (and no other letter is ever silent).
It's called yumuşak g (soft g) and it wears a hat: ğ.

ğ actually has the effect of very slightly extending the sound that comes before it. So, for example, sağ (right) is
pronounced with a slight double beat on a: sah - ah. In practice, it's a very slight extension, but it is discernable.
Don't worry about overdoing it when you are practicing; that's preferable to ignoring it, and it will come naturally in
no time.

Dağ (pronounced: da - a)
Mountain.

Köpeğim (pronounced: kö - pe - e - im)


My dog.

Vocabulary

alfabe alphabet

harf letter

kelime word

sözlük dictionary
cümle sentence

Review

1. When is the h silent in Turkish?

a. When it comes after g.

b. When it comes at the end of a word.

c. When it comes after p.

d. H is never silent in Turkish.

2. Why is the modern Turkish alphabet perfectly phonetic?

a. It has been continuously improved and reformed for centuries.

b. It was invented in the 1920's.

c. The Ottoman Empire commissioned a Latin alphabet to cater to European investors.

d. It's actually not perfectly phonetic.

3. How do you pronounce the name for the letter F (using Turkish spelling)?

a. F

b. Fa

c. Fe

d. Ef

4. What does Ğ do?

a. Nothing. It's silent.


b. Depending on the sentence, it can be silent or make a normal g sound.

c. It's silent and slighty extends the sound of the letter that comes after it.

d. It's silent and slightly extends the sound of the letter that comes before it.

5. Which letter or combination of letters makes the sh sound in Turkish? (write)

Answer Key

1. d
2. b
3. c
4. d
5. Ş

More. . .

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