The Turkish Writing System
Fun fact: Turquoise is the favorite color of Turks.
Turkey is one of the nations in the world with designated "official script" -Atatürk's writing system.
The Turkish republic was found in 1923, and 5 years later, Turkish people experienced an overnight shift of their writing system. As one of the means of modernization of Turkey, Ataturk-the founding father of the country, ordered to switch the Arabic script into a Latin script. Turkish alphabet now consists of 29 letters, 7 of which (Ç, Ş, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals to meet the phonetic requirements of the Turkish language.
a, be, ce, çe, de, e, fe, ge, yumuşak ge, he, ı, i, je, ke, le, me, ne, o, ö, pe, re, se, şe, te, u, ü, ve, ye, ze. These are names of the letters in the Turkish alphabet.
The letters Q (qu), X (iks) and W (we) aren't present in the official Turkish alphabet, but are occasionally used in loanwords. ğ is not pronounced, but lengthens the vowel before it. There are no diphthongs except in a few foreign loan words. Ç is pronounced as ch sound as in cherry. Ş is pronounced like sh in word shrimp. Ö is pronounced the same was i is pronounced in word shirt. Ü is pronounced as ew is pronounced in the word brew.
Overall, Turkish writing and reading system is very simple and pretty much resembles English. It is important to learn the few differences though. I believe, I am pretty confident in my pronouncing and reading skills of Turkish, and I am glad Ataturk made the shift of the writing system in 1928, since it made it easier, at least for me, to learn the Turkish alphabet.
Comments