Turkish phonology Totally Explained

Everything about Turkish Phonology totally explained

The phonology of the Turkish language describes the set of sounds and their relationships with one another in spoken Turkish. One characteristic feature of Turkish is a system of vowel harmony that distinguishes between front and back vowels. The majority of words in Turkish adhere to a system of only having one of the two groups. Consonants are also affected, with palatal stops being present with front vowels and velar stops existing with back ones. Further details are given below.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish>

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Dental		Alveolar	Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal	m				n
Plosive	p	b			t	d				c	ɟ	k	ɡ
Fricative			f	v	s	z		ʃ	ʒ				ɣ	h
Affricate								tʃ	dʒ
Tap							ɾ
Approximant					ɫ			l		j

The phoneme /ɣ/ usually referred to as yumuşak g ("soft g"), ğ in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
When a vowel is added to nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes <ğ> by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in

and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel.

Vowels

IPA chart for Turkish vowels

The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, ü. There are no diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords or old Ottoman words, each vowel retains its individual sound. Turkish vowels with example words>

Vowel sound Example

IPA Description IPA Orthography English translation

i Close front unrounded vowel [d̪il] dil 'tongue', 'language'

y Close front rounded vowel [ɟyˈneʃ] güneş 'sun'

ɯ Close back unrounded vowel [ɯˈɫɯk] ılık 'mild, tepid'

e Close-mid front unrounded vowel [jel] yel 'wind'

œ Open-mid front rounded vowel [ɟœɾ] gör- 'to see'

a Open central unrounded vowel [d̪äɫ] dal 'branch'

o Close-mid back rounded vowel [joɫ] yol 'way'

u Close back rounded vowel [uˈʧak] uçak 'airplane'

Vowel harmony
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:

twofold (-e/-a): the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. The notation -in⁴ is a convenient shorthand.

Front Back

small> Unrounded Rounded Unrounded Rounded

High i ü ı u

Low e ö a o

The following examples, based on the copula -dir⁴ ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiyedir ("it is Turkey"), kapıdır ("it is the door"), but gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat"). Compound words are considered separate words with regards to vowel harmony: vowels don't have to harmonize between the constituent words of the compound (thus forms like bu+gün ("today") or baş+kent ("capital") are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony doesn't apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes, such as -iyor, the conjugation suffix for the present tense; there are also a few native Turkish words that don't follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother").
Stress
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Exceptions include some suffix combinations, and loanwords (particularly from Italian and Greek) such as /ˈmasa/ ('desk'), /loˈkanta/ ('restaurant'), or /isˈcele/ ('pier'). In many proper names the stress is transferred to the syllable before last (eg /isˈtanbul/, İstanbul), although there are exceptions to this (eg /ˈankaɾa/, Ankara).

Further Information
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