Letter names: spell it aloud

The idea

A consonant is named by the consonant plus e: be, de, le, me. A vowel is named by its own sound: a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, ü. So Ali is a, le, i and Ece is e, ce, e. Two names are not what you expect: ğ is yumuşak ge (soft ge), and c is ce, which starts with the sound of English “jam”. Keep the final e short.

Examples

• Ben harfleri tek tek söylüyorum.I say the letters one by one.
• Adını harf harf söyler misin?Can you say your name letter by letter?
• Adımı telefonda harf harf söylüyorum.I spell my name letter by letter on the phone.
• a, le, i“Ali” spelled out
• e, ce, e“Ece” spelled outThe letter c is called ce and has the sound of English j in jam, so Ece is e, ce, e.
• çe, a, yumuşak ge, le, a, re“Çağlar” spelled outThe letter ğ is called yumuşak ge, soft ge. A plain ge would be the letter g.
• je, a, le, e“Jale” spelled out
• ye, ı, le, me, a, ze“Yılmaz” spelled out
• ı, şe, ı, ke“Işık” spelled outOn a bad line, add noktasız ı (dotless) or noktalı i (dotted) to the vowel, so the listener hears which of the two you mean.

Watch out

Do not bring English letter names across: c is not “see”, j is not “jay”, y is not “why”. In Turkish they are ce, je and ye, so “see” makes your listener write another letter. And ğ is never plain ge: the listener would write a g.

Try it yourself

1. Spell Ece aloud. Write the missing letter name.

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   ce

   ce: the name of a consonant is its sound plus e, and the sound of c is the j of English “jam”, not s or k.

2. Complete the name of the letter ğ: ___ ge.

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   yumuşak

   yumuşak: the name ge already belongs to g; the extra word tells the listener that ğ is meant.

3. Spell Jale aloud. Write the name of the first letter.

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   je

   je: j follows the consonant pattern, and its sound is the j of French “Jacques”, so its name is je.

4. Spell Yılmaz aloud. Write the name of the last letter.

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   ze

   ze: z is a consonant, so it gets e after it, like be and te.

Use it today

Spell your first name and surname aloud, letter by letter. Then write down what you said and check each name against the table.