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Turkish Alphabet & Pronunciation

The Latin-based Turkish alphabet, special letters, vowel sounds, and pronunciation rules
Altaic hypothesis and Turkic language family
Turkic within Altaic debate
varies
Turkic family is well-established; Altaic grouping with Mongolic/Tungusic is debated
Proto-Turkic reconstruction
reconstructed ancestor of modern Turkic languages
varies
Proto-Turkic had 8 vowels; modern Turkish reduced this; vowel harmony inherited
Old Turkic and Orkhon inscriptions
earliest written Turkic
varies
Orkhon script (8th c. CE) is the earliest substantial Turkic writing
Arabic and Persian phonological loans
sounds borrowed with loanwords
varies
Pharyngeal and uvular consonants reduced in Turkish; h retained but weakened
Atatürk's language reform: Latin alphabet adoption 1928
script reform and language purification
varies
Replaced Arabic script; simultaneous Öz Türkçe movement to replace Arabic/Persian loans
Vowel harmony typology
cross-linguistic perspective on VH
varies
Turkish VH is a front-back harmony system; one of the most regular in Turkic
Morphophonological opacity
surface forms obscure underlying structure
varies
Kitabı obscures underlying kitap; surface-to-underlying mapping requires rules
Hiatus and epenthesis in Turkish
vowel sequence resolution strategies
varies
Turkish avoids vowel hiatus via buffer consonants y and n
Prosody: stress and intonation
Turkish word stress and sentence intonation
varies
Turkish stress mostly final; intonation rises for questions, falls for statements
Modern phonological change: Istanbul Turkish
ongoing changes in prestige dialect
varies
G-deletion, vowel reduction, and loanword integration changing Istanbul Turkish