Turkish

Hi, and welcome to my guide to speaking basic Turkish. Being a beginner myself, I can only provide you with the basic greetings and phrases of the language, but nevertheless, will you on your way to speaking the Turkish language. I have put the actual Turkish spelling of the words in red, and the way you pronounce them in blue - which makes it a lot clearer! Have fun, and good luck!! (yi êanslar!).

Consonants

The Turkish È (soft g) is not pronounced, but slighly lengthens the

proceeding vowel.

Mostly, h is pronounced as in English, but in some words, there is different,

slightly gutteral h sound. This shown as H.

The Turkish r is slightly rolled, and always audibly pronounced. As a reminder that it should be pronounced ever time, when it occurs in the middle or the

end of a word, it is written a R.

¸ is like the English ch.

ê is the same as sh in English.

j is given as zh.

Double consonants in Turkish, (as in dòkkan) takes twice as long to say as

single consonants. The effect is a little like saying them twice. The double

consonants have been hyphenated (e.g. res-sam)

Vowels

a, e, i, and o are pronounced very much as they are in English. Please not

that a capital I has a dot over the top like this: .

A capital I without a dot is the upper case form of Ï (see below).

u is almost exactly like the English sound oo.

Ï is pronounced rather like the English sound er as in the word 'letter', or the

sound uh. It is show as uh.

ò is shown as ew.

Ø is shown as ur, with a small r. Do not confuse this with the slightly rolled r

(shown as R in the middle and at the end of words.)

Vowel blends ai and ay are pronounced like i in 'side'. The symbol Í is used to represent this sound.

Turkish Numbers

Turkish Alphabet

Days of the Week

Basic Greetings

Basic words and phrases