Turkish Alphabet

Sometimes I read and hear that some countries which are far from Turkey think that Turks speak another language than Turkish. Some people think that we speak Arabic. Actually, Turkish is very different from Arabic in the grammar structure. But from the history, there are many words that come from Arabic. Even though there are many words, that doesn't mean Turks can understand Arabic. To think this would be a Huge mistake.

In 1923, Turkey became a new country. Before that, the country was The Ottoman State. It had a language based on three languages: Turkish, Arabic and Persian. Before the alphabet revolution in November 1st 1928, Arabic letters were used. But we use the Latin alphabet since that time. So, if you use Latin letters too, you can read and write almost all Turkish letters too.

I said "almost", because there are a few different letters. They are;

• I - ı: dotless i
• İ - i: I with dot
• Ö - ö: o plus two dots (Like in German)
• Ü - ü: u plus two dots (Like in German)
• Ç - ç: c with cedilla (Like in French)
• Ş - ş: s with cedilla
• Ğ - ğ: g with a short wave

And there are some letters which we don't use in Turkish:

• Q - q
• X - x
• W - w

You will realize that there are two different letters: I and İ (other case ı and i) are different letters. That is important, because it might cause a problem if you use one of them instead of the other. But I guess you do not have a Turkish keyboard, so your friend will understand you ;)

If you can speak German, the letters ö and ü will be familiar. In Turkish, they are generally pronounced same as in German. But there is a difference here. In German, you can write them in a different way like ö=oe and ü=ue. But in Turkish, you cannot.

Another familiar letter might be ç if you can speak French. But this letter is pronounced in a different way in Turkish. We will discuss in detailed how they are pronounced later, but for now, I just want to say that ç in Turkish and ç in French are very different. Turkish ç is like "ch" in English.

Now there is a different letter: Ş. That is just like sh in English. And Ğ is another different letter in Turkish.

Some of my friends ask about the "^". That is a sign in order to make the letter soften and/or lengthen. Such as "â, î, û". But they are not different letters and they may not be used. There is some conflict related to this topic. For example, "hala" and "hâlâ"; the first one may mean both: "aunt" and "still". But if you put the sign "^" it will be just "still". The difference is that the "a"s in the second one are soft and longer". Another example; "kar" = "snow" and also "benefit", but "kâr" = "benefit". For that reason, this sign is used generally only to clarify things.

As I said, we will discuss the pronounciations later, but for now, we will just talk about the letters in this writing.

And the vowels and consonants... In Turkish, we have 8 vowels and 21 consonants. Totally 29 letters.

Vowels are:

a	e	ı	i
o	ö	u	ü

And the rest of them are consonants. Finally, here is the complete Turkish alphabet:

• A - a
• B - b
• C - c
• Ç - ç
• D - d
• E -e
• F - f
• G - g
• Ğ - g
• H - h
• I - ı
• İ - i
• J - j
• K - k
• L - l
• M - m
• N - n
• O - o
• Ö - ö
• P - p
• R - r
• S - s
• Ş - ş
• T - t
• U - u
• Ü - ü
• V - v
• Y - y
• Z - z

Thanks to Veronica and Lady in Red for corrections.