Turkish Language — Lesson 1, Part 5 — Vowel and Consonant Harmony

In Turkish, consonant sounds are divided into voiced and voiceless, while vowel sounds are categorized as hard (back vowels) and soft (front vowels), as well as rounded and unrounded.

Hard vowels, or back vowels (Kalın ünlüler), include: [a, ı, o, u]. These vowels are heard and pronounced with a hard (deep) tone.

Soft vowels, or front vowels (İnce ünlüler), include: [e, i, ö, ü].

Almost all letters representing soft vowels (except for e) are written with dots, while hard vowels are typically written without dots. The presence of dots above a letter generally indicates a softer and longer pronunciation of the corresponding sound.

In addition to this classification, the same vowels are further divided into rounded and unrounded vowels:

The soft vowels [ö, ü] are pronounced with rounded lips and are therefore called rounded vowels (Yuvarlak).

The hard vowels [a, ı] are pronounced without significant lip movement and are thus called unrounded vowels (Düz).

Consonants, in turn, are divided into voiceless (Tonsuz) and voiced (Tonlu) sounds.

Voiceless consonants (Tonsuz):
[f, s, t, k, ç, ş, h, p]

To permanently memorize the voiceless consonants, you can learn the phrase:
“FıSTıKÇı ŞaHaP”, which translates to “Şahap – the pistachio seller” in Russian. This mnemonic contains all the voiceless consonants.

Voiced consonants (Tonlu):
[b, c, d, g, ğ, j, l, m, n, r, v, y, z].

Major vowel harmony

Major vowel harmony (also known as primary vowel harmony) in Turkish:
If the vowel in the first syllable is a back vowel (hard), then all the vowels in the following syllables must also be back vowels.
Conversely, if the vowel in the first syllable is a front vowel (soft), then all subsequent vowels must also be front vowels.

araba – car
bardak – glass
resim – picture
kedi – cat

Minor vowel harmony

Minor vowel harmony (or secondary vowel harmony):
If the vowel in the last syllable of a word is rounded (labial), then all vowels in the following suffixes must also be rounded. Conversely, if the vowel in the last syllable is unrounded, all vowels in the added suffixes will also be unrounded.

Examples:

kutu – box
görüşürüz – see you
Türkiyeliyim – I am from Turkey

Consonant harmony rule

Consonant harmony rule:
If a word ends in a voiceless consonant, suffixes that begin with voiced consonants cannot be added directly. Instead, a voiced consonant must be used in the suffix to maintain phonetic harmony.

Examples:

mutfak + ta = mutfakta – in the kitchen

ağaç + ta = ağaçta – on the tree

fıstık + çı = fıstıkçı – pistachio seller

Also, voiceless consonants at the end of a word — p, ç, t, k — change to their voiced counterparts — b, c, d, ğ — when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added.

Examples:

dolap → dolaba – into the wardrobe

uçak → uçağa – into the airplane

Lesson 1

• Alphabet
• New Vocabulary
• Introduction
• Demonstrative Pronouns
• Vowel and Consonant Harmony
• Yes/No Questions
• Exercises
• Dialogue “At the Bazaar”