Turkish: An Essential Grammar

Celia Kerslake, Asli Goksel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134042173
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Lingue

Turkish: An Essential Grammar is a concise, user-friendly guide to the most important structures of contemporary Turkish. Presenting a fresh and accessible description of the language, this engaging grammar uses clear, jargon-free explanations offering practical guidance on understanding and constructing words and sentences correctly.

Chapter 1

The alphabet and pronunciation

1.1	The Turkish alphabet

The alphabet contains 29 letters. Below we give a basic guide for the pronunciation of each letter. Pronunciation will be discussed in more detail in the subsequent sections.

‘a’, ‘A’	as the u in ‘shut’
‘b’, ‘B’	as the b in ‘bet’
‘c’, ‘C	as the j in ‘jet’
‘ç’, ‘Ç’	as the ch in ‘chat’
‘d’, ‘D’	as the d in ‘deer’
‘e’, ‘E’	as the e in ‘pen’
‘f’, ‘F’	as the f in ‘fact’
‘g’, ‘G’	as the g in ‘go’
‘ğ’, ‘Ğ’	silent
‘h’, ‘H’	as the h in ‘heavy’
‘ı’, ‘İ’	as the a in ‘among’
‘i’, ‘I’	as the i in ‘sit’
‘j’, ‘J’	as the s in ‘leisure’
‘k’, ‘K’	as the k in ‘keep’
‘l’, ‘L’	as the l in ‘leave’, ‘all‘, ‘lurid’
‘m’, ‘M’	as the m in ‘make’
‘n’, ‘N’	as the n in ‘net’
‘o’, ‘O’	as the o in ‘off’
‘ö’, ‘Ö’	as the German sound ö
‘p’, ‘P’	as the p in ‘pet’
‘r’, ‘R’	produced by touching the tip of the tongue on the medial part of the palate
‘s’, ‘S’	as the s in ‘hiss‘
‘ş’, ‘Ş’	as the sh in ‘sharp’
‘t’, ‘T’	as the t in ‘tea’
‘u’, ‘U’	as the u in ‘put’
‘ü’, ‘Ü’	as the German sound ü
‘v’, ‘V’	as the v in ‘verse’
‘y’, ‘Y’	as the y in ‘yoke’
‘z’, ‘Z’	as the z in ‘zap’

There is a much stronger correspondence between the letters and sounds in Turkish than there is in English, but there are some cases where a letter corresponds to more than one sound. These will be described in the sections below.

1.2	Consonants

Turkish consonants

‘b’, ‘c’, ‘ç’, ‘d’, ‘f, ‘g’, ‘ğ’, ‘h’, ‘j’, ‘k’, ‘l’,
‘m’, ‘n’, ‘p’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘ş’, ‘t’, ‘v’, ‘y’, ‘z’

• Some of these consonants are pronounced the same everywhere. These are ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘j’, ‘m’, ‘s’, ‘ş’, ‘y’ and ‘z’.

• The pronunciation of some consonants varies just a little, depending on what sounds precede and/or follow them. However, the audibility of these differences varies from one speaker to another. These letters are ‘ç’, ‘p’, ‘t’, ‘f and ‘v’.

‘ç’, ‘k’, ‘p’ and ‘t’ are pronounced with less air when they are followed by another consonant than when they are followed by a vowel, and with most air when there are no other words following them. For example, the last letter (‘t’) in Masayı şu duvara it! ‘Push the table towards that wall!’ is pronounced with a stronger air release than the ‘t’ in iterim ‘I will push [it]’, which, in turn, has more air release than the ‘t’ in Gitsen iyi olur ‘You should go...