In 1928 by decree of President Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, written Turkish was converted from the Arabic to the Roman alphabet.  Turkish is spoken by more than 40 million people in Turkey and by many thousands more in Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, and other parts of the Middle East that once belonged to the Ottoman Empire.   Languages very closely allied to Turkish, the so-called Turkic group, are spoken in western Iran, parts of central Asia, and western China.  Modern Turkish and the Turkic languages belong to the Uralic-Altaic language group of Central Asia which also includes Hungarian, Finnish, and several other Baltic and Eastern Asiatic languages.

The number of words and phrases employed in everyday conversation is surprisingly small.

There are no gender problems in Turkish.  For example, the pronoun o stands for he, she, or it.  Words are formed by adding on to the basic unit or stem.   Example: ist "to want", iyor present tense sign, um "I" ending, gives you istiyorum, "I want."

Only a few letter sounds are pronounced differently or have marks or signs that change the familiar sound.

        The c is Turkish is pronouched like the j in judge.

        The j is used only for foreign words and sounds like z in azure.

        The ç is like ch in church.

        The s is like sh in ship.

        The ö has no equivalent in English.  Say "bet" and round the lips.

        The ü is like the French u in tu.   Say "bee" and round the lips.

There are two "i's" in Turkish:   the familiar dotted "i" and the one without a dot.  The dotted i is like ee in beet.  The undotted "i" is approximately like the i in first.

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