Learn about the Turkish alphabet
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Intro |
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| Michael: What alphabet does Turkish use? |
| Dilek: Has it changed over time, and, if so, how? |
| Michael: At TurkishClass101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: a kindergartener is studying the alphabet with her mother. The child sees an unfamiliar letter and asks, |
| "What letter is this?" |
| Ozgur Atli: Bu hangi harf? |
| Dialogue |
| Ozgur Atli: Bu hangi harf? |
| Meryem Atli: Bu, ö. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ozgur Atli: Bu hangi harf? |
| Michael: "What letter is this?" |
| Meryem Atli: Bu, ö. |
| Michael: "It's "o" modified with an umlaut." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: In Turkey, the Latin Alphabet or |
| Dilek: Latin Alfabesi |
| Michael: has been used since November 1928. During that year, a law about changing the Arabic Alphabet into the Latin Alphabet passed and it was called the Alphabet Revolution. |
| Dilek: Harf Devrimi |
| Michael: There were a lot of contradictory opinions about this drastic change; however, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was determined to make this change. Before this revolution, the literacy rate or |
| Dilek: Okuma yazma oranı |
| Michael: was very low. In 1923, the rate was 2.5% and it went up to 20.4% by 1935 thanks to the new alphabet. The Turkish vowel system is different from Arabic and it was really confusing to read the Turkish words written with the Arabic alphabet which are mostly made up of consonants or |
| Dilek: Sessiz harfler. |
| Michael: Many words had to be written without vowels. Since the Arabic alphabet doesn't have enough vowels, it was very confusing for Turkish speakers to understand written language. Only well-trained scholars were able to write and read it properly. There are 29 letters in the modern Turkish alphabet, and 8 of them are vowels: |
| Dilek: a [pause], e [pause], ı [pause], i [pause], o [pause], ö [pause], u [pause], [pause] ü. |
| Michael: Seven Latin letters were modified according to the phonetic requirements of Turkish. These letters are: |
| Dilek: ç [pause], ş [pause], ğ [pause], ı [pause], i [pause], o [pause], ü. |
| Michael: Sometimes, an accent mark called the circumflex is also used to differentiate the vowels such as |
| Dilek: a and â, or i and î. |
| Michael: Such a small diacritic can make a big difference. For example, |
| Dilek: hala |
| Michael: means "aunt" and the same word written with circumflexes |
| Dilek: hâlâ |
| Michael: means "still" |
| Michael: And, in Turkish, the vowels and consonants should always follow each other as a rule. The order should be vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant… or consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel. When adding suffixes to a word, if two vowels follow each other, buffer letters are added. You can remember these buffer letters from the word |
| Dilek: Yaşasın! |
| Michael: which means "hurray!" You just drop the vowels and the buffer letters are left. |
| Michael: If there is a word that does not follow to this rule, it's probably a foreign word such as |
| Dilek: internet, |
| Michael: which comes from English and means "Internet" or |
| Dilek: randevu |
| Michael: which comes from French and means "date," or "meeting." |
| Expansion |
| Michael: The Arabic alphabet was really confusing for Turkish people because a lot of words were written the same but meant different things, such as the two words |
| Dilek: gül and kul, |
| Michael: meaning "rose" and "servant" respectively —so you can imagine the confusion in reading! People had to guess the meaning instead of reading it. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Dilek: Hoşçakalın! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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