A Note on Turkish Pronunciation

Appears in

Published 1989

About

Turkish is a phonetic language; all letters are clearly pronounced, and syllables are pronounced with more or less equal stress. Most consonants are pronounced as in English, but note:

c as j in jam
ç as ch in church
g as g in gas
ğ is a soft sound, almost silent, which lengthens the vowel it follows
h is always pronounced
j occurs in a few foreign words and is pronounced as s in pleasure
ş as sh in ship

The vowel sounds are as follows:

a as a in apple
e as e in end
ı written without a dot; a sound rather like ‘uh’ or e in wanted
i as i in bill
o as 0 in open
ö not an English sound, but something like ur in churn
u as u in pull
ü like French u in tu or German ü in über