The current Turkish alphabet used for the Turkish language replaced the earlier arabic alphabet and was created at the initative of Kemal Atatürk by borrowing different Latin characters in 1928. The letter Ö was taken from the Swedish alphabet because the Swedish interpreter from the Dragoman House (ambassador house) was assigned to the committee creating the new writing language. Ç was taken from Albanian, Ş from Romanian, and Ü from German.
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
Note that dotted and undotted I are separate letters, each with its own uppercase and lowercase form. I is the capital form of ı, and İ is the capital form of i. The Turkish alphabet has no q, w or x. Instead, those characters are written as k, v and ks.
Optional circumflex accents can be used with "â", "î" and "û" to disambiguate words with different meanings but otherwise the same spelling, or to indicate palatalization of a preceding consonant, or long vowels in loanwords, particularly from Arabic.
These are seen as variants of "a", "i", and "u" and are becoming quite rare in modern usage.
See also
External links
Last updated: 10-14-2005 04:58:18
