# Pronunciation of the letter  ı



## Loukassit0

Hello, 
I have a really difficulty to pronounce your ı and thus, i'm wondering if I'm able to pronounce such a letter. Maybe I'm not.

If this is existing, I will be glad if someone can find an English, Spanish or French word containing this pronunciation. That would help me a lot.


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## Outsider

I'm afraid there is none. 

If I may make a suggestion, although it's not the same sound, you could adopt the French "_e_ muet" as a first approximation, and then use your ears and eyes to gradually correct your pronunciation over time.


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## Rallino

As an exercise, trying vocalising. Start with E (é) for a few seconds and slowly make it an i, without interruption.



> _Eeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiii_



You will notice that from e to i, your tongue doesn't move, it's your lips that cause the change. Your mouth is open while pronuncing "e", then slowly closing for the i.

The same relation between e and i, exists between a and ı.

Start with A (your mouth is open just like e), and _*without*_ moving your tongue, slowly close your mouth (just like i).



> _Aaaaaaaaaıııııııı_



This might look childish, but give it a try.


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## Loukassit0

So ı is between A and İ with the mouth almost closed?


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## Outsider

For the phonetic description of Turkish _ı_, see the vowel chart here.


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## Rallino

> So ı is between A and İ with the mouth almost closed?



No no !

The letters ı and i have exactly the same shape. I guess I confused you 

Okay let's try something else.  

This time pronunce a normal iiiiii, like in French. While pronuncing "i", your mouth is almost closed, in a horizontal shape. Now keep this position, *don't move your mouth*, but try pronuncing the letter a. So what you're going to do is pronuncing aaa while your mouth is in the position of i. You'll notice that, for "a", your tongue will move backward, and you'll get a very closed a, which is an ı.

So ı and i are in the same position, it's just the position of your tongue that makes the difference. (tongue is forward for i, backward for ı).

EDIT: I'm not sure how much I'm helping here. Probably since I'm a native speaker, I'm not very good at explaining these ... You may want to ask others who have learnt Turkish.


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## Loukassit0

I thanks everyone for your help. Rallino, you gave me a great aid. At the moment, I think I can pronounce ı in the good way. But now, I'm not able to pronounce it in a word, for example, in Nasılsınız. I have to train a lot.


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## Rallino

Try pronuncing the words that have *only* the letter ı. (Nasılsınız has an 'a'). And if possible, words that start with ı are better. Here are some for you:

Start with these:
ısı
ışık
ılık
ıslık
ısırık

When you feel confortable, you can practise these:
cıs
kır
tır
zır
fıstık
hızlı
pıtırcık

Once your tongue got enough "muscles"  Try pronuncing words that have mixed vowels like: nasılsınız, kaslı, yastık etc.


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## Black4blue

The letter* ı* is shown as /ɯ/ on IPA table.
And I know only one word which has exactly /ɯ/ sound: *ugh*

But no need to get worried. Cause this sound is quite close to the schwa sound (/ə/).
The e letters on last syllables in "better, under, number... etc" may help you. Well ɯ and ə are not the same; but I don't think it's a big problem to use them instead of each other.


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## dawar

Maybe you can invert a natural phenomena to make it easier.

French "cramoisi" comes from "kırmızı", then you can try to pronounce step by step :

*cramoisi*
kramuazi
kıramuazi
kırmuazi
And when you feel comfortable with this one you can go further :
*kırmızı*.

I don't really know if it helps but it is a good exercise at least


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## macrotis

This idea struck me when I tried Sanskrit a bit but I didn't have opportunity to research it:

When I hear words like "start," "crime" or Turkish "kral," I often hear a _vague_ ı sound between  s and t, c and r and k and r respectively. If you, Turk participants, had the same experience then we can tell all who have difficulty in pronouncing ı to try to make that vague sound distinct.

What would you say?

---
This was the idea: It's as if this sound was common once but has been lost in some languages.


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## berndf

Rallino said:


> This time pronunce a normal iiiiii, like in French. While pronuncing "i", your mouth is almost closed, in a horizontal shape. Now keep this position, *don't move your mouth*, but try pronuncing the letter a. So what you're going to do is pronuncing aaa while your mouth is in the position of i. You'll notice that, for "a", your tongue will move backward, and you'll get a very closed a, which is an ı.
> 
> So ı and i are in the same position, it's just the position of your tongue that makes the difference. (tongue is forward for i, backward for ı).
> 
> EDIT: I'm not sure how much I'm helping here. Probably since I'm a native speaker, I'm not very good at explaining these ... You may want to ask others who have learnt Turkish.


I find it most helpful to think of "i" as an "u" (French "ou") without lip-rounding, i.e. the position of the tongue is as for "u" but the lips are not rounded. The relationship between "u" and "ı" is analogous to "ü" vs. "i" (French "u" and "i"): "ü" is pronounced with rounded lips, "i" is not. As you mentioned, the difference between these pairs is that "ü"/"i" happens in the front of the mouth and "u"/"ı" in the back.

Do you agree with this description?


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## Rallino

berndf said:


> I find it most helpful to think of "i" as an "u" (French "ou") without lip-rounding, i.e. the position of the tongue is as for "u" but the lips are not rounded. The relationship between "u" and "ı" is analogous to "ü" vs. "i" (French "u" and "i"): "ü" is pronounced with rounded lips, "i" is not. As you mentioned, the difference between these pairs is that "ü"/"i" happens in the front of the mouth and "u"/"ı" in the back.
> 
> Do you agree with this description?





So if we sum it up for the learners in the future. 3 ways to produce a proper ı sound:

1. Pronuncing A, while your lips have the position for i.

2. Pronuncing U _(French ou)_, while your lips have the position for i.

3. Vocalise between E and i without moving your tongue, reach the "i" via slowly closing your lips. Now start with A (your tongue is now more backward than before), and slowly close your lips again. If you do it right (wihout moving your tongue), you should be producing an ı.


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## Bobcats

Actually it's very similar to the sound /ɨ/ as in some U.S. state names (_Miss*i*ssippi_, _Cal*i*fornia_, etc.).


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## Black4blue

Bobcats said:


> Actually it's very similar to the sound /ɨ/ as in some U.S. state names (_Miss*i*ssippi_, _Cal*i*fornia_, etc.).


 
I don't know IPA professionally; but as I know /ɨ/ sound is not similar to 'ı'. 'ɨ' is more like unstressed 'i' letters at ends of words in Turkish.


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## Bobcats

Black4blue said:


> as I know /ɨ/ sound is not similar to 'ı'



No, it's similar


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## er targyn

Is Russian ы ('ɨ'?) the same?


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## Bobcats

er targyn said:


> Is Russian ы ('ɨ'?) the same?



Turkic languages with Cyrillic script used/ s the "ы" for Latin "ı" but I'm not sure how it's pronunced in Russian.


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## Black4blue

I know that Russian has the /ɯ/ sound. And as I remember it is like 'b' like what you wrote.


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## Rallino

er targyn said:


> Is Russian ы ('ɨ'?) the same?



Russian ы (which is pronunced with a faint / j / sound) and Bulgarian ъ (which is between Turkish *a* and *ı*) are similar but not exactly identical.


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## er targyn

As far as I know, Russian ы is /ɨ/, while, for example, Kazakh ы is /ɯ/, which can be written as ъ (mute in Russian) or skipped to show its phonetic value. Kızıl Orda is usually written in Russian without the first ı.


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## acemi

I've followed this thread because it has been the most difficult letter for me to pronounce. 

my 2cents worth:
Rallino's explanation of e-->i  the a-->ı  gave me what seemed the closest sound and feel with how my friends demonstrated the sound: watching the throat and so on.  

I don't find it similar to the sounds in _Miss*i*ssippi_, _Cal*i*fornia _: that seems more like the schwa sound (/ə/)  
The difference between /ə/  and /ɯ/  seems to be tongue position, with /ɯ/ being further back in the mouth than /ə/ which feels more in the middle than back.   [and the front of my tongue goes flatter for /ɯ/].  
/a/ and /ɯ/  are similar in how far back they are. 
/ə/ and /ɯ/  are similar in how high they are. 

This is why macrotis may 'hear' the 'ı'  [or /ɯ/] when saying the english word 'crime' - the back of the tongue is high to meet the palate for the 'c' then when releasing the 'c' the high back part of the tongue moves slightly back to move for the 'r' sound.  If this is slowed down, then it is close to /ɯ/ but not quite.  

Thanks Rallino and others for this interesting exploration.


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## ancalimon

the "ı" sound is the sound you make just before the R sound in the word  pi*ER*cing  without the Y in the front of the sound.


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## acemi

> the "ı" sound is the sound you make just before the R sound in the word  pi*ER*cing  without the Y in the front of the sound



hmmm  - for a native english speaker that doesn't work.  Maybe because our  'r' is different? combined with going from 'pi' sound to 'r' rather than  'pi' to 'er' 
If I say just 'er' it seems to work a bit  but still closer to the schwa than ı  

It's  amazing how such a small change in tongue shape can change the sound.  We have a wonderfully complicated instrument and each language tunes the  instrument differently. 

[oh, i was just distracted from sending  this because I recalled there was a discussion about pronunciation of  'r' - but it didn't help for this reply]


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## berndf

acemi said:


> /a/ and /ɯ/  are similar in how far back they are.


I suppose you meant /ɑ/ and not /a/. /ɑ/ and /ɯ/  are both back vowels while /a/ is a front vowel.


acemi said:


> /ə/ and /ɯ/  are similar in how high they are.


/ɯ/ is considerably higher than /ə/


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## acemi

berndf, you are probably right -  but i was talking about /a/ 
I was feeling my articulation while doing the exercise described by Rollino and looking at a chart, which shows /ɯ/ and /a/ almost the same distance back for Turkish [ /ɯ/ above /a/ ]. 
The chart did not have /ə/ so I was just feeling the height, which is probably not very accurate.  
So just now I tried making the /ɯ/ sound with the back of my tongue even higher - it is an effort!   but indeed produces a better approximation to the /ɯ/ sound.  Thank you.  
and makes it even more different from the schwa.  
and makes it even more difficult for a native english speaker [me anyway] to move from /ɯ/ to other letters...


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## Black4blue

Schwa and /ɯ/ are sooo close sounds. No need to know the difference at all.  /ɯ/ is just more stressed version of schwa. That's why schwa is back and /ɯ/ is front.


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## huso

SO what I can say in french there is no equivalent


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## berndf

acemi said:


> berndf, you are probably right -  but i was talking about /a/
> I was feeling my articulation while doing the exercise described by Rollino and looking at a chart, which shows /ɯ/ and /a/ almost the same distance back for Turkish [ /ɯ/ above /a/ ].


My mistake. I though you were talking about the standard positions of [ɯ] and [a]. Since Turkish /ɯ/ and /a/ are both more central than their standard counterparts, they are indeed relatively similar in terms of horizontal position.


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## Loukassit0

I just found out a kind of * ı *in a French word: P*eu*r


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## berndf

Interesting, the Turkish letter the pronunciation of which is closest French to <eu> as in _peur_ is <ö> _Özal_. Compare positions of the rounded front vowel /œ/ in Türkish and French.

Do you perceive <ı> and <ö> as similar in Turkish. With my German ear, I perceive Turkish <ı> and the short German <ü> (which is not too far away from the Turkish <ü> and also not from <ö>) as similar. I thought this was just my untrained ear and I never assumed a Turk would hear such a similarity, too.


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## tigercity

my first post on Turkish language.. I speak it having lived in Turkey 6 years and having being married with a Turkish girl.. try pronouncing "cig kofte" (sorry don't have Turkish keyboard!) it's an even longer sound of the undotted "i"..


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## Black4blue

"çiğ köfte" doesn't have an *ı* letter.


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## Loukassit0

I was with a Turkish friend trying to train my ı pronunciation. No ı in çiğ köfte. Still so hard for me.


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## Snake Singh

The Turkish ı seems identical to the 'u' appearing at the end of Tamil words. Though written as one, it is not a full (round mouthed) 'u'.
It is a sound somewhat between 'i' and 'u'. Like the 'i' sound of 'Krishna'.

I am no expert (and I don't know Turkish), but going by IPA, my explanation seems close to correct. Talk to a Tamil-speaking person and ask him to pronounce the words adhu, idhu, edhu ... and catch how he/she pronounces the 'u'.

Hope this helps.


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