[Originally posted on 03/23/15 on the Duolingo Turkish for English speakers forum by Selcen_Ozturk]
The Turkish Alphabet
It consists of 29 letters.
a b c ç d e f g ğ h ı i j k l m n o ö p r s ş t u ü v y z
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 spelling of Turkish is phonetic, so once you learn the pronunciation of each letter, the reading should not be a problem. There are some exceptions though they are all caused by loanwords (mostly Arabic).
Turkish also uses a, i and u with the circumflex BUT the circumflex is often not used (The Turkish language association once kicked it out of the language, and tried to bring it back after a long time, but almost nobody uses them anymore, except for confusing words.) We will still give you the necessary information:
- â for /aː/ and/or to indicate that the consonant before â is palatalized
- î for /iː/ (no palatalization implied)
- û for /uː/ and/or to indicate palatalization.
Here is the pronunciation guide taken from Wikipedia. Please note that the letter ğ has almost no sound, it is used to lengthen the preceding vowel. If you don’t get how to pronounce it, better skip it instead of pronouncing it as “g” 🙂
The course accepts c-ç, ı-i, g-ğ, o-ö, s-ş, u-ü, not because the sounds are very close, because we know it is difficult to get used to a new keyboard. You’ll see a typo message when you don’t use the right character (although you are only allowed 1 typo normally, you are allowed to make as many “special character” typos as you want).
[Updated by Danika_Dakika starting 03/01/22]
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