Japanese → Turkish
Turkish uses 31 sounds. You already own 18 of them from Japanese. The other 13 are the work — and 13 of those are the dangerous kind: close enough to something you already say that you will substitute them without hearing yourself do it.
The silent swaps
Your mouth has something close enough to reach for. These survive for years precisely because they sound right to you — the fix is hearing the difference first, not trying harder.
the move: velar → palatal
Turkish: cat · written "k (before e, i, ö, ü, and â)"
The same letter k, said with the tongue on the hard palate: a faint y glides into the vowel. Before â it is the only thing that tells kâr 'profit' from kar 'snow'.
Your /k/ is the one in かさ kasa (umbrella).
the move: velar → palatal
Turkish: eye · written "g (before e, i, ö, ü, and â)"
The voiced partner of the palatal k. rüzgâr 'wind' keeps it before an a, and the circumflex is there to say so.
Your /ɡ/ is the one in ごはん gohan (rice, meal).
the move: bilabial → labiodental
Turkish: oven / bakery · written "f"
Your /ɸ/ is the one in ふゆ fuyu (winter).
the move: alveolar → postalveolar
Turkish: sugar · written "ş"
The cedilla letter. Hindi श and Russian ш are the same sound.
Your /s/ is the one in さかな sakana (fish).
the move: alveolar → postalveolar
Turkish: gendarmerie · written "j"
Only in loans, mostly French and Persian: garaj, plaj, müjde. A French reader already says it.
Your /z/ is the one in みず mizu (water).
the move: alveolo-palatal → postalveolar
Turkish: tea · written "ç"
Your /t͡ɕ/ is the one in ちいさい chīsai (small).
the move: alveolo-palatal → postalveolar
Turkish: mosque · written "c"
THE trap for a French or English reader: Turkish c is always j as in 'jam'. ceket = 'jacket', almost spelled phonetically.
Your /d͡ʑ/ is the one in じかん jikan (time).
the move: rounded
Turkish: lake · written "ö"
German ö, French eu in deux.
Your /e/ is the one in えき eki (station).
the move: rounded
Turkish: rose · written "ü"
German ü, French u in tu.
Your /i/ is the one in いま ima (now).
the move: alveolar → labiodental
Turkish: house · written "v"
Between vowels and beside u/ü it softens towards a w: tavuk 'chicken'.
Your /z/ is the one in みず mizu (water).
the move: uvular → velar
Turkish: colour · written "n (before k, g)"
Not a letter of its own any more — Ottoman script had one (ڭ), and some dialects still keep the sound between vowels.
Your /ɴ/ is the one in ほん hon (book).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Turkish sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
- v = z = ʒ = l → your z vs vs vs
- k = c → your k vs train this pair →
- ɡ = ɟ → your ɡ vs
- s = ʃ → your s vs train this pair →
- e = ø → your e vs
- i = y → your i vs train this pair →
- ɯ = u → your ɯ vs train this pair →
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| Japanese | Turkish | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Mora-timed | Syllable-timed, rising to the end |
| Stress | No stress in the English sense — syllables are not louder or longer, so a Japanese speaker reading English tends to flatten it, and an English speaker reading Japanese tends to hammer syllables that should be even. | Regular by default: the last syllable, and it travels rightwards as suffixes are added (kiTAP, kitapLAR, kitaplarDAN). The exceptions are what make it a real system. Place names are stressed early, on a pattern borrowed from their shape (ANkara, İsTANbul, İZmir); many adverbs and old loans stay on the first syllable (ŞIMdi, YArın, LOkanta); and some suffixes refuse the stress and push it onto the syllable before them — the negative -me-/-ma- above all, so that the same letters can be a noun or a command. |
What you have that Turkish doesn't
13 sounds with no job in Turkish. They are not mistakes — but they are where an accent leaks in, because a sound you own is easy to use when a hard one is due.
The honest caveat
This is a prediction from the shape of two sound systems, not a recording of you. It says what your inventory makes likely — it cannot know that your Japanese has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned Turkish from someone whose accent you copied. A teacher listening to you beats it. Use it to know what to listen for.
Other first languages: English · French · Spanish · Portuguese · German · Italian · Georgian · Russian · Hindi · Mandarin Chinese · Cantonese · Vietnamese · Korean · Malay