The Turkish Writing System

Before the first quarter of the 20th Century, Turkish was written using a script of modified Arabic characters called Ottoman Turkish script.1 Modern Turkish is written today using a modified Latin alphabet, minus the q, w and x; these characters are replaced with k, v and ks). The Turkish alphabet also includes the following additional letters: Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö and Ü.

The Turkish alphabet:

Capital letters

A

B

C

Ç

D

E

F

G

Ğ

H

I

İ

J

K

L

M

N

O

Ö

P

R

S

Ş

T

U

Ü

V

Y

Z

Lower case letters

a

b

c

ç

d

e

f

g

ğ

h

ı

i

j

k

l

m

n

o

ö

p

r

s

ş

t

u

ü

v

y

z

The  Turkish language has the distinctive characteristics of vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. In vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other, which can lead to highly complex spelling rules. Agglutination is a method of word formation in which morphemes, (root words) are combined without fusion. This process is characterized by the addition of one or more prefixes or suffixes to a root word. In Turkish, most of these affixes are suffixes. As an example, in Turkish, ev means "house," ev-den means "from a house," and ev-ler-den means "from houses."

Turkish can have extreme examples of agglutination resulting in long words. For example, the Turkish expression Avustralyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınızcasına is pronounced as one word, but it can be translated into English as "as if you were one of those whom we could not make resemble the Australian people." (Wikipedia.)

The Turkish language experienced an overnight switch from an Arabic-based writing system to one that was Latin-based in 1928, shortly after the founding of the Turkish republic in 1923. This radical change was initiated by Kemal Atatürk, the Turkish republic's founder and first president, who wanted to bring the Turkish people closer to the West and its way of life.

Turkey is one of the few nations in the world to have designated an "official script" (in this case, Atatürk's writing system). This designation in Turkish was intended to force the use of a Latin-based writing system over that of the older Arabic-based system. Atatürk's reforms were remarkably successful and the Arabic-based system faded away fairly quickly. Other countries which have official scripts are Azerbaijan (Azeri alphabet), Russia (Cyrillic alphabet), and Serbia and Montenegro (Cyrillic alphabet).3

Additional resources on the Turkish writing system can be found on the Web at:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/turkish.htm#ott

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_language

For information on The Turkish Writing System, please see our Quick Facts Library.

1 "Turkish alphabet" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_alphabet
[Accessed March 18, 2011]

2 "Turkish alphabet" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_alphabet
[Accessed March 18, 2011]

Find more Turkish translation and localization resources in our translation blog:

Turkish Translation Challenges

For information on The Turkish language and translation, please see our information on Turkish Translation.