Turkish pronunciation: 57 minimal pairs to listen to

Turkish writes almost exactly what it says. The hard part is not the spelling, but that it separates sounds English does not separate, or does not have. That is why the first groups are about the vowels: the dotless ı, and ö and ü, which English lacks entirely. Then come ğ, c and ç, the always sharp s, ş, length, double consonants and the end of the word.

Each of the 11 groups first says what an English speaker does instead; the words below are the evidence.

What happens here: An English speaker sees an i and says the i of “bit” or “bee”. Then kır (countryside) and kir (dirt) become the same word. The ı is made by saying “ee” and pulling the tongue back without rounding the lips. English actually has a similar sound — the unstressed vowel in “roses” or the second syllable of “taken” — but only as a weak murmur. In Turkish it is a full vowel that can carry stress, and because the difference is also in the spelling, it matters twice: if you type ı as i, you write a different word.

What happens here: An English speaker who avoids the i often lands on the murmured vowel of “the” and makes it an e, or pulls the tongue back and rounds the lips into a u. Either makes another word: kız (girl) becomes kez (time), yıl (year) becomes yel (wind), dış (outside) becomes duş (shower). Against the e, pull the tongue back; against the u, keep the lips flat, as if smiling slightly.

What happens here: English has no ö, so an English speaker reaches for the nearest familiar vowel — the o of “hot” or the vowel of “bird”. In Turkish the difference carries whole everyday words: on is ten, ön front; çok very, çök collapse. To make ö, say the e of “bed” and round your lips as for o. Watch the o too: a Turkish o is short and pure, never the glide of English “go” (“goh-oo”).

What happens here: As with ö: English has no ü. English speakers usually say the u of “food”, and then üç (three) can no longer be told apart from uç (tip), düş (dream) from duş (shower). To make ü, say the “ee” of “see” and round your lips as for “oo”, keeping the tongue at the front. With numbers this matters most, because they are often said quickly and out of context.

What happens here: An English speaker sees a g and says a g: dağ becomes “dag”, and the English spelling “yoghurt” encourages it. But ğ is no longer a consonant you hear. After a, ı, o, u it lengthens the vowel before it (dağ sounds like a long “daa”), after e, i, ö, ü it often sounds like a light y (değer like “deyer”), and between two vowels it almost merges them. Think of the silent “gh” in “night”. No word begins with ğ. So dağ (mountain) differs from da (too) mainly by length — exactly what is missing if you say “dag”.

What happens here: English reading turns c into a k (as in “cat”) or an s (as in “city”). Both are wrong in Turkish: c is always the voiced “j” of “jam”, ç the voiceless “ch” of “church”. You already have both sounds; the difference between them is the same as between d and t — with voice or without. cam (glass) and çam (pine), can (soul) and çan (bell) differ only in that. At the end of a word there is almost always ç.

What happens here: English spelling uses s for both sounds — “bus” and “busy”, “cats” and “dogs” — so an English speaker easily lets an s buzz between vowels or at the end of a word. In Turkish the letter decides: s is always the s of “sun”, z always the z of “zoo”. Mix them and words blur: sor (ask!) and zor (difficult), yaz (summer) and yas (mourning). Read the letter, not the habit.

What happens here: Every English speaker can say the sound; the difficulty is reading and typing it. An English keyboard has no ş, and if you write it as s, or overlook a written ş, you say another word: şu (that one) and su (water), taş (stone) and tas (bowl), baş (head) and bas (press!). Turkish needs no “sh” spelling: one letter, one sound.

What happens here: A Turkish vowel is normally short, and the spelling says nothing about length. In words from Arabic and Persian, though, there are long vowels, and some pairs depend on them. Where the words would otherwise be spelt the same, a circumflex is added: hala is an aunt, hâlâ means “still”; kar is snow, kâr profit. English speakers tend to overlook the circumflex, because English has none. Two identical vowels side by side are both pronounced, or as one long one: saat is not sat.

What happens here: In English a double consonant is just spelling: “dinner” has no longer n than “diner” has. In Turkish it is a sound you hear — the tongue holds for a moment before moving on, as it does across the gap in English “book case” or “ten nights”. Said the English way, elli (fifty) becomes eli (his hand), or attı (he threw) becomes atı (his horse). You hear it most easily if you say the two words slowly one after the other and pause briefly on the double consonant.

What happens here: Good news for once: English keeps “bad” and “bat” apart, and Turkish keeps ad (name) and at (horse) apart in exactly the same way. The risk lies elsewhere. Many English speakers swallow a final t or d into a glottal stop (“wha’”, “ba’”), and then both words disappear. In Turkish few words end in b, c, d or g — most have p, ç, t or k there (kitap, ağaç) — but some of the few are very common. Let the final consonant be heard: short, but clear.