Turkish phonology

This article is about the phonology of Istanbul Turkish. A notable feature of Turkish phonology is a system of vowel harmony that causes vowels in most words to be either front or back and either rounded or unrounded. Velar stop consonants have palatal allophones before front vowels.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar/ Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ	(c)1	k
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ	(ɟ)1	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f3	s	ʃ		h4
	voiced	v	z	ʒ3
Approximant			(ɫ)1	l	j	(ɰ)2
Flap			r

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 only occurs in some loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. (e.g. aile [a.i.le], laik [la.ic])

Turkish vowel phonemes

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i	y	ɯ	u
Open	e	œ	a	o

External links

• Turkish phonology