Turkish words for every day with IPA: days, months, numbers, greetings
Four sets of basic Turkish words, each on its own page: the seven days, the twelve months, the numbers and the greetings. Each page gives the spelling, a sourced pronunciation, where the word came from and the rules a learner needs, from the capital letter in a date to the reply to hoş geldiniz.
Turkish words by topic
Every topic page opens with a table of the words and then covers spelling, suffixes, usage and the mistakes English speakers make, with example sentences.
- 01Days of the week in Turkish: pazartesi to pazar, IPA and spellingThe days of the week in Turkish are pazartesi, salı, çarşamba, perşembe, cuma, cumartesi and pazar, Monday to Sunday. They are written in lower case in running text, take a capital only inside a specific date, and two of them are simply named after their neighbours.
- 02Months in Turkish: ocak to aralık, their origins and date writingThe months in Turkish are ocak, şubat, mart, nisan, mayıs, haziran, temmuz, ağustos, eylül, ekim, kasım and aralık. Eight came through Ottoman Turkish from Arabic, Aramaic, Greek or Latin; four were given Turkish names by a law of 1945.
- 03Numbers in Turkish from sıfır to milyar: ordinals and pronunciationCounting to ten in Turkish goes bir, iki, üç, dört, beş, altı, yedi, sekiz, dokuz, on. Every larger number is built from these words and a handful of tens, written as separate words in a fixed order with no and, so 25 is yirmi beş and 1,925 is bin dokuz yüz yirmi beş.
- 04Greetings in Turkish: hello, good morning, thank you and two goodbyesMerhaba is the all-purpose one among the greetings in Turkish, hello for any time and any listener; selam is the short hi among friends, and günaydın is good morning. Saying goodbye takes two different phrases: the person leaving says hoşça kal, the person staying answers güle güle.
How Turkish words are written
- TürkçeTurkish Latin
- merhabahello Latin
- İstanbulIstanbul Latin
Turkish has been written in the Latin alphabet since 1928, when Law No. 1353 replaced the Arabic script of Ottoman Turkish. The alphabet has 29 letters. It leaves out q, w and x and adds ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş and ü, as well as İ, the capital of dotted i. The Turkish alphabet is set out letter by letter on the alphabets page.
The pair that surprises newcomers is i and ı. They are two different vowels, and each has its own capital: i becomes İ and ı becomes I. That is why İstanbul starts with a dotted capital, and why software that capitalises Turkish words with English rules gets them wrong.
Eight of the letters are vowels, and they decide how every suffix is spelt. Vowel harmony makes a suffix copy the front or back quality of the word it joins, so the plural of gün, day, is günler, and the plural of ay, month, is aylar.
Dates, numbers and greetings: what to expect
Days and months are lower case unless they belong to a specific date, and a Turkish date runs day, month, year: 28 Ekim 2026. The days of the week in Turkish are named partly after the market and Friday, partly with Persian numbers; the months in Turkish mix Arabic, Aramaic and Latin names with four Turkish ones coined in 1945.
Numbers are written as separate words in a fixed order, such as yirmi beş for 25 and bin dokuz yüz for 1,900, with no bir before yüz and bin. A noun after a number stays singular. The numbers in Turkish page also covers ordinals, the decimal comma and the percent sign that stands in front.
Greetings come in pairs with fixed answers: hoş geldiniz is met with hoş bulduk, and hoşça kal with güle güle. The greetings in Turkish page lists them with the words for thank you and the wishes said to people at work or in trouble.
Where Turkish is spoken
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and one of the two official languages of Cyprus, beside Greek. The country pages give the names of the provinces and districts in Turkish.
Turkish words often have close relatives in the other Turkic languages. The Turkic word list sets Turkish beside Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh and their neighbours across 243 words, so gün, hafta, ay and yıl (day, week, month, year) can be followed from Gagauz in Moldova to Yakut in Siberia. How other languages name Turkish itself is collected under Turkish in different languages.
Questions about Turkish words
How many letters does the Turkish alphabet have?
29. It has no q, w or x and adds ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş and ü to the Latin letters; eight of the 29 are vowels.
What is the difference between i and ı in Turkish?
They are separate vowels. Dotted i has the capital İ, dotless ı has the capital I, so the two never merge in Turkish words written in capitals.
Which Turkish words should a beginner learn first?
Merhaba, teşekkür ederim and the numbers bir to on are needed from the first day. Days and months follow as soon as dates come up.
Are Turkish words for days and months capitalized?
Only when they belong to a specific date, as in 16 Ağustos 2005. Elsewhere Turkish words for days and months are written in lower case.