č → chess, church, match m → camp, comb, smack
→ judge, journey, region n → design, know, can
f → fish, flap, philosophy ŋ → thing, finger, ankle
θ → think, thief, through w → witch,queen, swim
ð → their, then, lathe l → leaf, call, palace
r → fear, rock, singer
y/j → you, bay, use
The plural suffix “-(e)s” is articulated in different ways, depending on the preceding sound. Voiceless fricatives follow another voiceless sound. (e.g. rocks) Voiced fricatives follow another voiced sound. (e.g. cows)
The past suffix “-ed” is articulated in different ways, according to the preceding sound. Voiceless stops follow another voiceless sound. (e.g. hoped) Voiced stops follow another voiced sound. (e.g. rubbed)
Turkish which also uses the Latin alphabet is an agglutinative language. It conforms to the rules of vowel harmony. The following chart shows the consonant phonemes of Turkish.
Letter Name Approximate Pronunciation in English
B be as in English
C ce “j” as in “jam”
Ç çe “ch” as in “church”
D de as in English
F fe as in English
G ge as in “goal”
Ğ * soft g The preceding vowel is lengthened.
H he as in House
J je “s” as in “pleasure”
K ka, ke “k” in “ink”
L le as in English
M me as in English
N ne as in English
P pe as in English
R re as in “sing”
S se as in “song”
Ş şe “sh” as “shark”
T te as in English
V ve as in English
Y ye “y” as in “yet”
Z ze as in English
In Turkish when a word finishes with a consonant, it is usually the hard form. For example, the word “mektup” which means “letter” changes into “mektubum” meaning “ my letter”.
In Turkish “b” and its unvoiced equivalent “p” are not so as aspirated as in English. In other words, they are produced with less emission of breath than is heard. (Lewis, G.L Turkish)
* In Turkish words never start with “ğ”(soft g).
“çekiç” which means “hammer” becomes “ çekicim” meaning “my hammer”. Here the last letter “ç” turns into its equivalent “c” for the ease of pronunciation.
In Turkish, “d” and “t” are more distinct than “d” and “t” in English. In Turkish, “d” and “t” are pronounced when the tongue touches the top teeth.
e.g. “Türk”, which means “Turkish”; “tavuk”, which means “chicken”.
In English the tongue touches the gums behind the top teeth to produce “d” and “t”.
In Turkish, “v” and its unvoiced equivalent “f” are weaker than they are in English. The top teeth touch the inner side of the lower lip. If “v” is between “u” and “a” as in “yuva” which means “nest”, it is even a weaker “v”.
If “g” and “k” are before or after a back vowel (a, ı, o, u), they are pronounced the same as the English words “go” and “come”.
e.g. “gazete” (newspaper); “kız” (girl)
If “g” and “k” are before or after a front vowel (e, i, ü, ö), they are palatalized. This means that they are followed by a y- sound, like the English “angular”, “cure”.
e.g. “gezi” /gyzi/, “trip”; “kürek” /kyüreky/, “oar”.
Some words in Turkish are originally Arabic and Persian. When these words have “g” and “k”, they are also palatalized before “a” and “u”. These Arabic and Persian words have a circumflex accent on their vowels. That is, they become “â” and “û”.
e.g. “kar” /kar/, “snow”; “kâr” /kyar/, “profit”
In Turkish when “ğ” (soft g) is at the end of a word or comes before a vowel, that vowel is lengthened as in “bağ” /ba:/ “vineyard” and “uğramak” /u:ramak/ “to drop by”.
When “ğ” is between back vowels, the preceding vowel is lengthened and the following vowel almost disappears in speech as in “oğul” /o:l/ meaning “son”.
When “ğ” is between front vowels, it is pronounced as a weak “y” sound as in the English word “buying”.
e.g. “değil” /deyil/ “not”;“eğer” /eyer/ “if”.
In addition, the “v” sound in Turkish is sometimes pronounced as “ğ”. The replacement of “v” by “ğ” happens in speech, not in writing.
e.g. “övmek” /öğmek/ “to praise”; “dövmek” /döğmek/ “to beat”.
In Turkish “h” is pronounced clearly, while in English “h” is sometimes pronounced. For example, in words like “honor, hour, honest” “h” is silent. “h” in Turkish is pronounced like the “h” in “human”.
In Turkish, “j” appears in borrowed words. It is like “s” in “pleasure” or “leisure”. Turkish examples are “jandarma” (gendarme), “jüri” (jury) and “jambon” (ham).
Both in Turkish and English “l” has two sounds: the clear “l” when there are front vowels and the dark “l” when there are back vowels. In the examples below “l” is clear.
e.g. “göl” (lake); “yel” (wind); “yelkenli” (sailboat).
On the other hand, in these examples “l” is dark.
“kıl” (hair), “kılçık” (fishbone), “falcı” (fortune-teller).
However, in Turkish the clear “l” can appear with “a” and “u” in borrowed words. Then, “a” and “u” have a circumflex accent over them.
e.g. as in “malûm” /malyum/ “known”.
The example above shows that the consonant which comes before the vowel is followed by a “y” sound.
In Turkish the pronunciation of “m” is the same as it is in English.
e.g. “yapmadım” (I didn’t do it.)
The pronunciation of “n” is the same as the English “n”.
e.g. “neden” (why, cause)
There is a pronunciation difference between the Turkish “r” and the English “r”. In Turkish the tip of the tongue touches the ridge of the gum behind the top teeth to pronounce “r” and it is always pronounced .
e.g. “tarak” /tarak/ meaning “comb”.
The pronunciation of “s” in Turkish is the same as the same as the “s” in “this” in English.
e.g. “kasa” (safe), “sağır” (deaf)
The pronunciation of “ş” in Turkish can be expressed as “sh” as in English “shell”.
e.g. “şemsiye” (umbrella), şişman (fat), “şehir” (city)
The pronunciation of “y” in Turkish depends on its position in the word. If it is the first letter of a word or after a consonant, it is like the “y” in yes”.
e.g. “yapmak” (to do)
When “y” is between vowels in Turkish, it is weaker as in “cumhuriyet” which means “republic”.
When “y” is between a front vowel and a consonant, the vowel is lengthened as in “söyle” /sö:le/ meaning “say it”.
In Turkish, “z” is pronounced the same as it is in English. Take the case of “zümrüt” which means “emerald”.
In conclusion, when the pronunciation changes in Turkish, the spelling also changes. On the other hand, in English this is not the case. That is, when pronunciation changes, the spelling generally does not change. In English, when the pronunciation is the same the spelling often changes in order to understand the meaning as in “meet –meat; morning-mourning; see – sea; flower-flour. In other words, English is not written phonetically, but Turkish is. Turkish is a phonetically written language, so it makes changes in spelling and pronunciation changes for the ease of speaking.
