The Turkish Language

Turkish is the language of 90 percent of the population in Turkey. The Caucasus and the Kurdish dialects, Arabic, Greek, Ladino and Armenian are among the other 70 languages spoken in the country. The Turkish spoken in Turkey, represents the southwestern branch of the Turkish language community within the Ural-Altaic Language branch, which experienced an evolution.

The communities which speak these languages spread from Central Asia towards the east and northeast, and especially to the west. Since ancient times Turkish has influenced the very different languages and dialects of Middle Persian and replaced some of the Indo-European languages from the Caucasus and Anatolia. After the acceptance of Islam, the influences of Arabic and Persian on the Turkish language became evident. As of around the end of the nineteenth century, contemporary Turkish writing such as the Turkish in Turkey, the Turkish in Azerbaijan and the Turkish in Kazakhstan, based on the Turkish dialects was being formed. Turkish is the seventh most spoken and widespread language among the average of 4,000 languages spoken in the world today. More than 200 million people speak Turkish.

The Turks, along with using many written languages from the eighth century up until the present, have mostly used the Gokturk, Uigur, Arabic and Latin alphabets. After the Republic was founded and national unity was ensured, especially between 1923-1928, the problem of the alphabet was given a lot of attention. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, believed that it was also necessary to benefit from the Western culture in order to attain a contemporary level of civilization in the new Turkey, and with this objective, he ensured the acceptance, in 1928, of the Latin alphabet that had been prepared according to the vocal harmony of Turkish rather than the Arabic alphabet.

The Language Reform continued with the founding by Ataturk, in 1932, of the Turkish Language Research Society with the objective of simplifying and purifying the language. The activities of the Society, which became the Turkish Linguistic Association after a period of time, produced positive results and important steps were taken to simplify the Turkish language by purifying it of Arabic and Persian words. Today, the Turkish Linguistic Association continues its activities with a reorganized statute within the structure of the Ataturk Cultural, Linguistic and Historical Higher Council established in 1983. The purification, simplification, enrichment and enhancement of Turkish are among the responsibilities of this organization. The most important result of the positive studies made up until the present related to the Turkish language is the fact that the ratio of the use of Turkish words in the written language, which was 35-40 percent prior to 1932, has reached around 75-80 percent at the present. This fact is the most important proof that the Language Reform made by Ataturk became the property of the public.

The Turkish Alphabet consists of twenty-one consonants and eight vowels.

A B C Ç D E F G Ğ H I İ J K L M N O Ö P R S Ş T U Ü V Y Z

The alphabet is phonetic as each letter retains its individual pronunciation at all times.

There are no diphthongs - except in a few foreign loan words.

About the Turkish Alphabet

The Turkish Alphabet was changed from Ottoman script to a Latin based script soon after the Turkish Republic was declared. Ottoman script was based on the Arabic alphabetic script but this did not adequately cover the phonetics of Turkish. Kemal Atatürk intoduced the new latin alphabet almost overnight.

Turkish does not as a rule allow two vowels to occur together - there are exceptions of course - but mostly in foreign imported words. Therefore as there are no diphthongs then whenever two vowels occur together, they are each pronounced as a separate sound.

The letter -Y- is considered as a consonant in Turkish, and it is widely used as a buffer consonant to keep vowels apart during word building.

The actual Law No:1353 dated 1st November 1928 which changed the Turkish Alphabet to Roman letters is shown in the right-hand panel.

Main Differences from English Pronunciation

Please note that all pronunciation examples shown below are given British English.

The Eight Vowels are divided into two groups for Vowel Harmony purposes

The Undotted-A Vowel Group

1. A - is as u in English lucky or mutter.
2. I - Undotted I - is the er sound in porter or water - without any r sound.
3. O - is as the o sound in lottery or bottom.
4. U - is as the oo sound in loot or boot

The Dotted-E Vowel Group

1. E - is as e in letter or set or met
2. İ -  Dotted İ - is as ee in meet or ea in seat.
3. Ö  - is as ir in bird or shirt - without any r sound.
4. Ü - is as ew sound few or stew

Some Consonants

The Pronunciation of these Consonants differs from English Pronunciation.

1. C  - is always a j sound as in jam jar.
2. Ç - is the ch sound as in church
3. G - is always hard as in gate. - It is never soft as in general.
4. Ğ - lengthens the preceding vowel. It has no sound and never begins a word.

The Turkish soft - ğ - can be likened to the silent gh sound in the English words such as - weight, light, fought - etc

1. H - is always aspirated as in Henry. It is never silent as in Heir.
2. R - is always strongly rolled even on the end of words.
3. S - is always hissed as in safe. - It is never a z sound as in these or those.
4. Ş - is the sh sound as in sharp or bash.

The Turkish Alphabet Identification

PS. To learn more about Turkish please visit: http://www.turkishlanguage.co.uk/index.htm