LingoflyÇ ç — çe
«çe» is a consonant of the Turkish script, read as “ch as in ‘church’”. An ordinary ch. For example, in the word “çay” — tea. The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. The little tail under the letter is the whole difference from c (j): çay is “chay”, tea — not “say”. It appears, for example, in the word “hoşça kal” — goodbye.
In short
| Character | Ç ç |
| Name | çe |
| Sound | ch as in “church” |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 4th of 29, its neighbours in the course are c and d, appears in 427 words of this site.
How to type Ç ç
- On a phone: press and hold c on the keyboard, and ç appears among the variants. If it does not, add the Turkish keyboard in the keyboard settings.
- In Word on Windows: type U+00E7 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 00E7.
- Unicode code points: ç — U+00E7, Ç — U+00C7. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
An ordinary ch
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- tea
The character in the “consonants of their own” group
Three signs Latin does not have: ç, ş and the “soft” ğ, which has no sound of its own. The fourth letter here is c — an ordinary shape, but it reads as the j of jam.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «çe» it is “ch as in ‘church’”, as in the word “çay”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 29 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Turkish character ç read?
As “ch as in ‘church’” — it is a consonant of the Turkish script. An ordinary ch. For example, in the word “çay” — tea.
What is the letter ç called?
Çe. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Turkish script: it is called “çe” and reads as “ch as in ‘church’”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can ç be confused with?
The little tail under the letter is the whole difference from c (j): çay is “chay”, tea — not “say”. Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.