Background

Language Family: Turkic / Common Turkic / Oghuz / Western Oghuz / Turkish

Speakers of Turkish reside in a multitude of countries spanning across southeast Europe and western Asia.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t d			k ɡ
Affricates			tʃ dʒ
Fricatives	f v	s z	ʃ ʒ			h
Nasals	m	n
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants		l		j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless, whereas those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

Long vowels occur in loanwords from Persian and Arabic, but it does not seem to be a contrastive feature of native words in Turkish (Göksel and Kerslake 2005, 11).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i y		ɯ u
Mid	e œ		o
Low		a

Alphabet

The capital of ⟨i⟩ is ⟨İ⟩ and the capital of ⟨ı⟩ is ⟨I⟩.
A circumflex (^) placed over a vowel may indicate lengthening or palatalization of the preceding consonant (Göksel and Kerslake 2005, x). I have chosen to transcribe these vowels to their plain representations.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b	/b/
c	/dʒ/
ç	/tʃ/
d	/d/
e	/e/
f	/f/
g	/ɡ/
ğ		See {1} below for details
h	/h/
ı	/ɯ/
i	/i/
j	/ʒ/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
ö	/œ/
p	/p/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
ş	/ʃ/
t	/t/
u	/u/
ü	/y/
v	/v/
y	/j/
z	/z/

{1} There seems to be some controversy around the grapheme ⟨ğ⟩. Yavuz and Balci (2011) states that some sources identify it as having a distinct sound whereas others do not (p. 22). They have the stance that there is no corresponding phoneme. Although Göksel and Kerslake (2005) does provide a corresponding sound /ɣ/ for some dialects, they also support the claim that the grapheme lacks a consonantal sound (p. 7). In actuality, the realization of the grapheme seems largely dependent and predictable based on the environment, often alternating with zero (inaudible realization). The main rules outlined by Göksel and Kerslake (2005) are described below:
- Word-finally or syllable-finally, it lengthens a preceding back vowel.
- Following front vowels in word-final or syllable-final positions, it may be realized as a palatal glide.
- Most often inaudible intervocalically (may be realized as a palatal glide between like front vowels).
For the sake of the transcription rules, I have opted to transcribe it to nothing.

Syllable Structure

Syllables in Turkish follow the order of (C)V(C) (Hulst and Weijer 1991, 4).

Lenition Rules

/v/ is realized as [β̞] or a [w] when preceded by a vowel (ibid.; Gurevich 2004, 252).
In word-initial and word-final positions, /ɾ/ is often fricated (Yavuz and Balci 2011, 25).
/f/ may be realized as [ɸ] in word-final positions and preceding rounded vowels (Göksel and Kerslake 2005, 6).

Misc. Rules

There is no contrast between velar and palatal stops in native Turkish words (Zimmer and Orgun 1992, 155). Rather, the palatal stops are allophones, occurring in syllables that have front vowels (Yavuz and Balci 2011, 25).
/l/ is velarized in the environment of back vowels
/h/, /ɾ/, and /l/ often devoice word-finally (ibid.). /ɾ/ and /l/ may also devoice when followed by a voiceless consonant.
In between a front vowel and consonant or after a front vowel in word-final positions, /h/ becomes a voiceless palatal fricative. In the same environments, but with back vowels, /h/ becomes a voiceless velar fricative (Göksel and Kerslake 2005, 8).
Consonants geminate (Lewis 1967, 8).

References

Göksel, Aslı, and Celia Kerslake. 2005. Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar. Routledge.

Gurevich, Naomi. 2004. Lenition and Contrast: The Functional Consequences of Certain Phonetically Conditioned Sound Changes. Routledge.

Hulst, Harry Van Der, and Jeroen Van De Weijer. 1991. “Topics in Turkish Phonology.” In In Turkish Linguistics Today, Ed. Hendrick Boeschoten and Ludo Verhoeven, 11–59. Brill.

Lewis, Geoffrey L. 1967. Turkish Grammar. Clarendon Press Oxford.

Yavuz, Handan, and Ayla Balci. 2011. Turkish Phonology and Morphology. Edited by Zülal Balpinar. Anadolu University.

Zimmer, Karl, and Orhan Orgun. 1992. “Turkish.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1-2). Cambridge University Press: 43–45.

Turkish

Justin Bai