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In Standard Turkish, "ğ" is explained as having no sound of its own but instead lengthens the previous vowel.

So would "aa" and "ağ" sound alike? What about "â" and "ağa"? Can there sometimes be three vowel length distinctions in Turkish?

(This is a reworded version of an example question I put up on the Turkish Language & Usage proposal but I've wondered about it since before that.)

Mechanical snail
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hippietrail
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5 Answers5

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I disagree partly with this answer claiming that 'aa' and 'ağ' are identical.

The sequence aa does not appear in Turkish words unless they are of Arabic origin, and the proper pronunciation of the aa sequence is not a single lengthened a sound, but rather two separate vowel sounds. Take for example the word cemaat (more properly cema'ât), which in its Arabic form has an 'ayn consonantal sound between the two a sounds. The same goes for the word müracaat, although I concede that the standard pronunciation of the doubled aa in these and similar words is often more akin to ağ or â.

The letter â comes mainly from Arabic loan words where it palatises the preceding consonant and/or lengthens the vowel (but Turkish orthography used to use it for French words as well: plân). Palatisation occurs with the letters k, g and l, but there is sometime ambiguity: kâtil has a long a but an unpalatised k; lâkin has a short a but palatised l.

The sound of ğ after a varies depending on the dialect of Turkish, but in Istanbul Turkish, you'd have to say that ağ and â are identical. The same does not hold true in, say, Eastern Turkey, where you will hear the ğ.

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SigueSigueBen
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    "katil" (murderer) was always spelled without the circumflex to prevent people from wrongly palatalizing the initial k, as they routinely do now for "ikâmet". But this led to another problem, people now routinely confuse it with "katil" (same spelling, pronounced with a short a, meaning "murder"). By the way, "lakin" does have a long a, and it's currently spelled without the circumflex. I also want to add that use of circumflex is now marginalized unless it solves an important ambiguity not recoverable from the context. Just check the daily newspapers :) – cyco130 May 06 '12 at 01:08
  • The preservation of the circumflex seems to be a losing battle... even those who know where to place them don't seem to! Lakin should be pronounced with a short, palatised a since it is originally لكن in Arabic (no long a). I think this is a case where the circumflex misled readers into an incorrect pronunciation! I recall that kâtil was sometimes spelt kaatil so that people didn't palatise the k but still pronounced the a long. This would make it an exception to the rule that aa is two vowel sounds (I can't think of any other such examples). – SigueSigueBen May 06 '12 at 01:17
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    TDK (Türk Dil Kurumu, Turkish Language Association) now recommends spelling "lakin" without the circumflex and pronounce it with a palatalized "l" and a long "a". Original arabic pronunciation definitely points to a confusion caused by this circumflex mess. In my opinion using a single diacritic for two different purposes was a mistake in retrospect. – cyco130 May 06 '12 at 01:31
  • When you say the pronunciation is "two separate vowel sounds", you mean without any kind of glottal stop or other hiatus between them right? (This is how it is in Japanese and Georgian for instance). If this is the case, how could we describe the difference with "a single lengthened sound"? – hippietrail May 06 '12 at 05:53
  • @hippietrail I meant that there should be two distinct vowel sounds separated by a brief pause. Because Turkish doesn't have the sounds that Arabic does, the 'ayn and hemze which create this condition will both be the same even though they were very distinct in the original. – SigueSigueBen May 06 '12 at 06:46
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    @cyclo130 Interesting to see that the new pronunciation of lakin has been 'officially' sanctioned. I agree that it was a mistake to have a multi-purpose circumflex. But then so was using a single consonant k for two different sounds... – SigueSigueBen May 06 '12 at 06:51
  • @SigueSigueBen: I would like a phonetic/phonological/linguistic description of this "two distinct vowel sounds separated by a brief pause". I wonder how it is articulated? Briefly ceasing exhalation, or just ceasing vibration of the vocal chords, or closing off the airflow at some point? – hippietrail May 06 '12 at 08:28
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    @hippietrail To me it seems to be a brief ceasing of exhalation. – SigueSigueBen May 06 '12 at 17:59
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    @hippietrail Some older speakers do use a glottal stop. But I'd say currently the main distinction is stress. For example in "saat", there are two syllables, the second one is stressed, the first one is not. i.e. /sa'at/ in contrast with /sa:t/ – cyco130 May 08 '12 at 02:26
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    Interesting. Georgian has also borrowed "saat" with the double "a" (საათი). It also doesn't have vowel length distinction, but every vowels means a syllable no matter if there's a cluster of six consonants between or none at all. Yet Georgian has no stress and no kind of hiatus between the two "ა" so it sounds just like a longer "ა" but to Georgian ears it is two syllables. I love this infinite variation between the languages of the world (-: – hippietrail May 08 '12 at 05:32
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ğ is a symbol used in writing Turkish. When word or syllable final, it indicates a preceding back vowel is lengthened and is typically silent otherwise. In some dialects it may be realized as a velar (or uvular) approximant, fricative or plosive. A velar approximant is an acceptable pronunciation in standard Istanbul dialect too, but it's becoming increasingly rare. Following a front vowel it may manifest as a palatal glide.

So "aa" and "ağ" are identical. When intervocalic, the preceding and following vowels belong to different syllables, meaning that "ağa" is a long syllable-final vowel followed by a syllable-initial vowel (so Turkish does not have a three-way length contrast). I don't know "â"??

There are some other complexities, discussed in the pdf here (pp 7-8).

cyco130
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Gaston Ümlaut
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    My final project for phonetics was to analyze the sound system of Turkish. By far the hardest part was characterizing the effect of 'ğ'. Eventually I came to, basically, the same conclusions as the cited paper: lengthen's vowels when it's syllable final, silent between similar vowels, occasionally a velar approximate and occasionally unrealized.

    I missed a lot of the complexities, and straight out wrong on some points. Still, if an undergraduate's fumbling attempts at research can be taken as corroborating evidence, I vote hippietrail awards this answer the bounty.

     – Nathan Oct 11 '11 at 02:16
  • For the standard Istanbul dialect this is mostly true except the "aa" = "ağ" part. "aa" is realized as two separate vowels. So "aa" = "ağa" would be more correct except some older speakers realize the first one a glottal stop between the "a"s. – cyco130 May 06 '12 at 01:13
  • Also, in some instances, "ğ" is realized more or less as a [j] when it's associated with front vowels. As in "değmek". – cyco130 May 06 '12 at 01:15
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    One last comment :) Many regional dialects realize "ğ" as a velar or uvular approximant, fricative or even as a flat out plosive. Realizing "ğ" as a slight velar approximant is perfectly acceptable in standard Istanbul dialect too, but may sound pedantic. – cyco130 May 06 '12 at 01:19
  • @cyco130 In the answer I did mention that it can be realised as a palatal glide following a front vowel. Thanks for the comment about the dialectel variants, maybe you'd like to add that to the answer? – Gaston Ümlaut May 06 '12 at 02:39
  • Sorry, I don't know how I missed that last sentence in the first paragraph :) – cyco130 May 06 '12 at 02:46
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When ğ is between back vowels: "provides a smooth transition between vowels, since they do not occur consecutively in native Turkish word". (wikipedia)

As for â and ağa - they denote different historical evolution rather than different lengths. The soft g has, at some point, existed as a separate sound between vowels. For example in Turkmen (another language of the same group) the word for "onion" is "sogan". Loanwords in other languages, like Bulgarian or Bulgarian dialects also have the g - "sugan" for "onion". On the other hand â is used only for load words.

Bozho
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  • Yes I know the history of the (groups of) letters is different but I don't know how they are pronounced. I pronounce ğ very faintly but I really speak Turkish so nobody seems to notice or correct me. As for â it can be due to Arabic or Persian loans but also due to a native reason that I can never remember. – hippietrail Sep 22 '11 at 07:47
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I am a native turkish speaker living in İstanbul, 30 years old. I am an architect, really interested in linguistics and I am reading the questions and answers with big enthusiasm. I would like to correct an issue: "aa" and "ağa" are not the same. It takes two stops to give the sound of aa.

I agree with sigue and his examples of "cemaat" and "müracaat", which are right. It takes two syllables to pronounce "aa" here: "ce-ma-at" and "mü-ra-ca-at". there are a a lot of ways to use "ğ", though.

I found a good research on the issue (in Turkish), that may be helpful for the ones that know turkish already.

Otavio Macedo
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sedef
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I speak another turkic language and we pronounce ğ as a lighter ģ. My question is, how was ğ pronounced in Ottoman time just before transition to Republic of Turkey. It was rendered as /غ/ in Ottoman script. Ì assume it was pronounced as a full blown /غ/, but some how when Latìn based script was adopted they messed up by calling it a soft [g], which incuraged people to get rid of it specially Istanbul is a cosmopolitan ciity with a lot of partially Turkified people who had trouble pronouncing /غ/. Turkish had two kinds of e, open [ə] and closed [e]. It was decided to unify the into a single letter: e as in English end. I thing this had a profound effect on pronunciation of the rest of the sounds, for example ģ is easy to pronounce with [ə] than [e], and it is easy with {aıou} than with {eiöü}, that is why it is used in Azerbaijani with {aıou} but turned to /y/ with {eiöü}. For example Turkish "değil" is renderd as "deyil" in Az. Some Az. Write dəyikl too. I notice some people in Turkish TV chanels pronounce değil as "de'il", that is inserting a stop between [e] and [i] !
Another thing that messed up pronunciation is getting rid of long vowels that people liked, which is evident from preferring Arabic and Persian lown words that has long and short sounds and don't have vowel harmony...

Turhan Tisinli
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