තුර්කි භාෂාව

**Turkish** ( , ), also referred to as **Turkey Turkish** (*Türkiye Türkçesi*), is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 80 to 90 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. Significant smaller groups of Turkish speakers also exist in Iraq, Syria, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official language, even though Turkey is not a member state. Turkish is the 13th most spoken language in the world.

To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet.

The distinctive characteristics of the Turkish language are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender. The language makes usage of honorifics and has a strong T–V distinction which distinguishes varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect.

## Classification 
Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of the Turkic family. Other members include Azerbaijani, spoken in Azerbaijan and north-west Iran, Gagauz of Gagauzia, Qashqai of south Iran and the Turkmen of Turkmenistan.

Classification of the Turkic languages is complicated. The migrations of the Turkic peoples and their consequent intermingling with one another and with peoples who spoke non-Turkic languages, have created a linguistic situation of vast complexity. The nineteenth-century Ural-Altaic theory, which grouped Turkish with Finnish, Hungarian and Altaic languages, is controversial. The theory was based mostly on the fact these languages share three features: agglutination, vowel harmony and lack of grammatical gender. Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the *Compendium of the Turkic Dialects* (Ottoman Turkish: ''Divânü Lügati't-Türk'').

### Ottoman Turkish
 ]]

Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire period (c. 1299–1922) is termed Ottoman Turkish, which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish. The everyday Turkish, known as *kaba Türkçe* or "rough Turkish", spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, contained a higher percentage of native vocabulary and served as basis for the modern Turkish language.

### Language reform and modern Turkish 
After the foundation of the modern state of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.   

Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is considered particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman which sounded so alien to later listeners that it had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995.

The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as '** to replace **', "political party"—also failed to meet with popular approval ('** has been replaced by the French loanword **'). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example ''* (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.

Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:

## Geographic distribution 
 branch in Berlin written in the German and Turkish languages.]]
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. Turkish language is mutually intelligible with Azerbaijani and other Turkic languages. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Iraq, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany; and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in the United States, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic members of the diaspora speak the language with native fluency.

In 2005 93% of the population of Turkey were native speakers of Turkish, about 67 million at the time, with Kurdish languages making up most of the remainder.

Azerbaijani language, official in Azerbaijan, is mutually intelligible with Turkish and speakers of both languages can understand them without noticeable difficulty, especially when discussion comes on ordinary, daily language. Turkey has very good relations with Azerbaijan, with a multitude of Turkish companies and authorities investing there, while the influence of Turkey in the country is very high. The rising presence of this very similar language in Azerbaijan and the fact that many children use Turkish words instead of Azerbaijani words due to satellite TV has caused concern that the dinstictive features of the language will be eroded. Many bookstores sell books in Turkish language along Azerbaijani language ones, with Agalar Mahmadov, a leading intellectual, voicing his concern that Turkish language has "already started to take over the national and natural dialects of Azerbaijan". However, the presence of Turkish as foreign language is not as high as Russian. In Uzbekistan, the second most populated Turkic country, a new TV channel *Foreign Languages TV* was established in 2022. This channel has been broadcasting Turkish lessons alongside with English, French, German and Russian lessons.

### Official status 
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. Turkish has official status in 38 municipalities in Kosovo, including Mamusha,, two in the Republic of North Macedonia and in Kirkuk Governorate in Iraq.

In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (*Türk Dil Kurumu* or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name *Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti'' ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and of foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. The TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.

### Dialects 
Modern standard Turkish is based on the dialect of Istanbul. This **Istanbul Turkish** (*İstanbul Türkçesi*) constitutes the model of written and spoken Turkish, as recommended by Ziya Gökalp, Ömer Seyfettin and others.

Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and in the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academic researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as *ağız* or *şive*, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these words. Several universities, as well as a dedicated work-group of the Turkish Language Association, carry out projects investigating Turkish dialects.  work continued on the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect-atlas of the Turkish language.

 across Southeast Europe and the Middle East.]]

Some immigrants to Turkey from Rumelia speak Rumelian Turkish, which includes the distinct dialects of Ludogorie, Dinler, and Adakale, which show the influence of the theoretized Balkan sprachbund. *Kıbrıs Türkçesi* is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. *Edirne* is the dialect of Edirne. *Ege* is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörüks of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey, who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.

The Meskhetian Turks who live in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia as well as in several Central Asian countries, also speak an Eastern Anatolian dialect of Turkish, originating in the areas of Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin and sharing similarities with Azerbaijani, the language of Azerbaijan.

The Central Anatolia Region speaks *Orta Anadolu*. *Karadeniz*, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax; it is also known as *Laz dialect* (not to be confused with the Laz language). *Kastamonu* is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. Karamanli Turkish is spoken in Greece, where it is called . It is the literary standard for the Karamanlides.

## Phonology 
### Consonants 
At least one source claims Turkish consonants are laryngeally-specified three-way fortis-lenis (aspirated/neutral/voiced) like Armenian.

The phoneme that is usually referred to as *yumuşak g* ("soft g"), written  in Turkish orthography, represents a vowel sequence or a rather weak bilabial approximant between rounded vowels, a weak palatal approximant between unrounded front vowels, and a vowel sequence elsewhere. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.

In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and  are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and  often occur with back vowels: some examples are given below.

#### Consonant devoicing 
Turkish orthography reflects final-obstruent devoicing, a form of consonant mutation whereby a voiced obstruent, such as , is devoiced to  at the end of a word or before a consonant, but retains its voicing before a vowel. In loan words, the voiced equivalent of */k/* is */g/*; in native words, it is */ğ/*.

This is analogous to languages such as German and Russian, but in the case of Turkish, the spelling is usually made to match the sound. However, in a few cases, such as *ad*  'name' (dative *ada*), the underlying form is retained in the spelling (cf. *at*  'horse', dative *ata*). Other exceptions are *od* 'fire' vs. *ot* 'herb', *sac* 'sheet metal', *saç* 'hair'. Most loanwords, such as *kitap* above, are spelled as pronounced, but a few such as *hac* 'hajj', *şad* 'happy', and *yad* 'strange' or 'stranger' also show their underlying forms.

Native nouns of two or more syllables that end in */k/* in dictionary form are nearly all *//ğ//* in underlying form. However, most verbs and monosyllabic nouns are underlyingly *//k//*.

### Vowels 
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, , , , , , , , . The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being three-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by how and where they are articulated focusing on three key features: front and back, rounded and unrounded and vowel height. Vowels are classified [±back], [±round] and [±high].

The only diphthongs in the language are found in loanwords and may be categorised as falling diphthongs usually analyzed as a sequence of /j/ and a vowel. This principle is expressed in Turkish through three rules:

# If the first vowel of a word is a back vowel, any subsequent vowel is also a back vowel; if the first is a front vowel, any subsequent vowel is also a front vowel.

The second and third rules minimize muscular effort during speech. More specifically, they are related to the phenomenon of labial assimilation: if the lips are **rounded** (a process that requires muscular effort) for the first vowel they may stay rounded for subsequent vowels. and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* '*twofold (*-e/-a*)*': the locative case suffix, for example, is *-de* after front vowels and *-da* after back vowels. The notation *-de*² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* '*fourfold (*-i/-ı/-ü/-u*)*': the genitive case suffix, for example, is *-in* or *-ın* after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and *-ün* or *-un* after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation *-in*4 is used.

Practically, the twofold pattern (also referred to as the e-type vowel harmony) means that in the environment where the vowel in the word stem is formed in the front of the mouth, the suffix will take the e-form, while if it is formed in the back it will take the a-form. The fourfold pattern (also called the i-type) accounts for rounding as well as for front/back. The following examples, based on the copula *-dir*4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of i-type vowel harmony in practice: ''Türkiye'**dir*** ("it is Turkey"), *kapı**dır*** ("it is the door"), but *gün**dür*** ("it is the day"), *palto**dur**'' ("it is the coat").

##### Exceptions to vowel harmony 
These are four word-classes that are exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony:

# **Native, non-compound words**, e.g. '** "also," **' "light brown," '** "apple," **' "which," '** "where," **' "come on," '** "to believe," **' "brother," '** "fat," **' "mother"
# **Native compound words**, e.g. '** "today," **' "gossip"
# **Foreign words**, e.g. '** (4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the *k* by consonant alternation): *viyadüğü*

The rules of vowel harmony may vary by regional dialect. The dialect of Turkish spoken in the Trabzon region of northeastern Turkey follows the reduced vowel harmony of Old Anatolian Turkish, with the additional complication of two missing vowels (ü and ı), thus there is no palatal harmony. It's likely that *elün* meant "your hand" in Old Anatolian. While the 2nd person singular possessive would vary between back and front vowel, -ün or -un, as in *elün* for "your hand" and *kitabun* for "your book", the lack of ü vowel in the Trabzon dialect means -un would be used in both of these cases — *elun* and *kitabun*.

## Word-accent 
With the exceptions stated below, Turkish words are oxytone (accented on the last syllable).

### Exceptions to word-accent rules 
# **Place-names are not oxytone:**

#### Negation 
The two groups of sentences have different ways of forming negation. A nominal sentence can be negated with the addition of the word *değil*. For example, the sentence above would become *Necla öğretmen değil* ('Necla is not a teacher'). However, the verbal sentence requires the addition of a negative suffix *-me* to the verb (the suffix comes after the stem but before the tense): *Necla okula gitmedi* ('Necla did not go to school').

#### Yes/no questions 
In the case of a verbal sentence, an interrogative clitic *mi* is added after the verb and stands alone, for example *Necla okula gitti mi?* ('Did Necla go to school?'). In the case of a nominal sentence, then *mi* comes after the predicate but before the personal ending, so for example *Necla, siz öğretmen misiniz*? ('Necla, are you [formal, plural] a teacher?').

#### Immediately preverbal 
Consider the following simple sentence which demonstrates that the focus in Turkish is on the element that immediately precedes the verb:

#### Postpredicate 
The postpredicate position signifies what is referred to as background information in Turkish- information that is assumed to be known to both the speaker and the listener, or information that is included in the context. Consider the following examples: This has direct implications for word order as it is possible for the subject to be included in the verb-phrase in Turkish. There can be S/O inversion in sentences where the topic is of greater importance than the subject.

## Grammar 
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example ***sım**sıcak* ("boiling hot" 4, "our". With the addition of the copula (for example *-im* 4, "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle *mi* 4 immediately follows the word being questioned, and also follows vowel harmony: *köye mi?* "[going] to the village?", *ağaç mı?* "[is it a] tree?".

### Personal pronouns 
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are *ben* (1s), *sen* (2s), *o* (3s), *biz* (1pl), *siz* (2pl, or 2h), and *onlar* (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: *benim* (1s gen.); *bizim* (1pl gen.); *bana* (1s dat.); *sana* (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of *o* use the root *on*. As mentioned before, all demonstrative singular and personal pronouns take the genitive when *ile* is affixed onto it: *benimle* (1s ins.), *bizimle* (1pl ins.); but *on**un**la* (3s ins.), *onlarla* (3pl ins.). All other pronouns (reflexive *kendi* and so on) are declined regularly.

#### Noun phrases (*tamlama*) 
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:

* definite (possessive) compound (*belirtili tamlama*). E.g. *Türkiye'nin sesi* "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending *-in*4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix of possession 4.
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (*belirtisiz tamlama*). E.g. *Türkiye Cumhuriyeti* "Turkey-Republic = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending 4—the same as in definite compounds.

The following table illustrates these principles. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds; for clarity these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets]. The suffixes involved in the linking are underlined. Note that if the second noun group already had a possessive suffix (because it is a compound by itself), no further suffix is added.

As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group.

There is a third way of linking the nouns where both nouns take no suffixes (*takısız tamlama*). However, in this case the first noun acts as an adjective, e.g. *Demir kapı* (iron gate), *elma yanak* ("apple cheek", i.e. red cheek), *kömür göz* ("coal eye", i.e. black eye) :

### Adjectives 
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. *güzel* ("beautiful") → *güzeller* ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives *var* ("existent") and *yok* ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", *e.g.* *süt yok* ("there is no milk", *lit.* "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "*noun 1*-GEN *noun 2*-POSS var/yok" can be translated "*noun 1'' has/doesn't have *noun 2*"; *imparatorun elbisesi yok* "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-*of* clothes-*his* non-existent");  ("my cat had no shoes", *lit.* "cat-*my*-*of* shoe-*plur.*-*its* non-existent-*past tense*").

### Verbs 
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or non-potential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, inferential, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix *-me²-* immediately following the stem.

### Verb tenses 
(*Note*. For the sake of simplicity the term "tense" is used here throughout, although for some forms "aspect" or "mood" might be more appropriate.) There are 9 simple and 20 compound tenses in Turkish. 9 simple tenses are simple past (''di'li geçmiş*), inferential past (*miş'li geçmiş*), present continuous, simple present (aorist), future, optative, subjunctive, necessitative ("must") and imperative. There are three groups of compound forms. Story (*hikaye*) is the witnessed past of the above forms (except command), rumor (*rivayet*) is the unwitnessed past of the above forms (except simple past and command), conditional (*koşul*) is the conditional form of the first five basic tenses. In the example below the second person singular of the verb *gitmek* ("go"), stem *gid-/git-*, is shown.

There are also so-called combined verbs, which are created by suffixing certain verb stems (like *bil* or *ver*) to the original stem of a verb. *Bil* is the suffix for the sufficiency mood. It is the equivalent of the English auxiliary verbs "able to", "can" or "may". *Ver* is the suffix for the swiftness mood, *kal* for the perpetuity mood and *yaz* for the approach ("almost") mood. Thus, while *gittin* means "you went", *gidebildin* means "you could go" and *gidiverdin* means "you went swiftly". The tenses of the combined verbs are formed the same way as for simple verbs.

#### Attributive verbs (participles) 
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present, similar to the English present participle (with the ending 2); future (2); indirect/inferential past (4); and aorist (2 or 4).

The most important function of some of these attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The subject of the verb in an 2 form is (possibly implicitly) in the third person (he/she/it/they); this form, when used in a modifying phrase, does not change according to number. The other attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (2) and an older form (4), which covers both present and past meanings. These two forms take "personal endings", which have the same form as the possessive suffixes but indicate the person and possibly number of the subject of the attributive verb; for example, *yediğ**im*** means "what **I** eat", *yediğ**in*** means "what **you** eat", and so on. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause.

## Vocabulary 
Latest 2010 edition of *Büyük Türkçe Sözlük* (*Great Turkish Dictionary*), the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 616,767 words, expressions, terms and nouns, including place names and person names, both from the standard language and from dialects.

### Word formation 
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.

Turkish obeys certain principles when it comes to suffixation. Most suffixes in Turkish will have more than one form, depending on the vowels and consonants in the root- vowel harmony rules will apply; consonant-initial suffixes will follow the voiced/ voiceless character of the consonant in the final unit of the root; and in the case of vowel-initial suffixes an additional consonant may be inserted if the root ends in a vowel, or the suffix may lose its initial vowel. There is also a prescribed order of affixation of suffixes- as a rule of thumb, derivative suffixes precede inflectional suffixes which are followed by clitics, as can be seen in the example set of words derived from a substantive root below:

Another example, starting from a verbal root:

New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. Compounds can be of two types- bare and . The bare compounds, both nouns and adjectives are effectively two words juxtaposed without the addition of suffixes for example the word for girlfriend  () or black pepper  (). A few examples of compound words are given below:

However, the majority of compound words in Turkish are  compounds, which means that the second word will be marked by the 3rd person possessive suffix. A few such examples are given in the table below (note vowel harmony):

## Writing system 
 introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French *L'Illustration* magazine)]]

Turkish is written using a Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Ottoman Turkish alphabet, a version of Perso-Arabic alphabet. The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowels—long *ā, ū* and *ī*—and included several redundant consonants, such as variants of *z* (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.

The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public. As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original, pre-modern levels.

The Latin alphabet was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th-century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. *alma agatsdan irak duschamas*—"An apple does not fall far from its tree").

Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonemic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes  ( being used for the  found in Persian and European loans); and the undotted , representing . As in German,  and  represent  and . The letter , in principle, denotes  but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters  and  represent  and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following  and  when these consonants represent  and —almost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans.

The Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters (q, x, w omitted and ç, ş, ğ, ı, ö, ü added); the complete list is:
:*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*, and *z* (Note that capital of *i* is *İ* and lowercase *I* is *ı*.)

The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:

## Sample 
*Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın* by Âşık Veysel Şatıroğlu (1894–1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.

## Whistled language 
In the Turkish province of Giresun, the locals in the village of Kuşköy have communicated using a whistled version of Turkish for over 400 years. The region consists of a series of deep valleys and the unusual mode of communication allows for conversation over distances of up to 5 kilometres. Turkish authorities estimate that there are still around 10,000 people using the whistled language. However, in 2011 UNESCO found whistling Turkish to be a dying language and included it in its intangible cultural heritage list. Since then the local education directorate has introduced it as a course in schools in the region, hoping to revive its use.

A study was conducted by a German scientist of Turkish origin Onur Güntürkün at Ruhr University, observing 31 "speakers" of *'' ("bird's tongue") from Kuşköy, and he found that the whistled language mirrored the lexical and syntactical structure of Turkish language.

## Turkish computer keyboard 
Turkish language uses two standardised keyboard layouts, known as Turkish Q (QWERTY) and Turkish F, with Turkish Q being the most common.

## See also 
* Sun Language Theory
* Turkish name
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of Turkish exonyms
* Öztürkçe
* Languages used on the Internet

## Notes
## References 
### Sources
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*  (2nd edition 1989)
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## Further reading 
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*Rezvani, B. "Türkçe Mi: Türkçe’deki İrani (Farsca, Dimilce, Kurmançca) Orijinli kelimeler Sözlüğü.[Turkish title (roughly translated): Is this Turkish? An etymological dictionary of originally Iranic (Persian, Zazaki, and Kurmanji Kurdish) words]." (2006).

## External links 
* 
* 
* Swadesh list of Turkish basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
* Turkish Language: Resources – University of Michigan