33
Approximant
Y
h
Table-4: The Vowels and Consonants of Turkish
Vowels and Consonants
a
front
f
l
front
T
a
Back
g
front
l
back
U
a
Long
g
back
m
Ü
b
ğ
n
V
c
h
o
Y
ç
i
ö
Z
d
i
p
e
Open
j
r
e
Close
k
front
s
e
Long
k
back
ş
4. The most important feature of the Turkish alphabet is that, it is a phonetic alphabet, which
means that one letter represents one sound of the language. In the Turkish alphabet, diphthongs (two
vowels) and multiple consonants are not used for one sound.
5. In the second half of 1928, newspapers used both alphabets (Arabic and Turkish). Starting
from the first day of January 1929, newspapers and books were printed with the new alphabet. All
official documents, official records, signboards and nameplates were written with the new alphabet
in one year. This process was completed by the end of 1929.
6. Today, children can learn to read and write with the Turkish alphabet in 4 to 6 months. In
1927, the percentage of literacy in the population was less than 20%, but today it is 95%.
7. After changing the Arabic alphabet, Turks started working on improving the Turkish
language. In 1927, the Turkish language had many Arabic and Persian words. Statistics show that
38% of the words were Turkish and 58% were Arabic and Persian. The grammar of the language
was similar to the Arabic or the Farsi grammar. In the 1990’s the percentage of Turkish words were
increased up to 85% to 90%.
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