LingoflyI ı — ı without a dot
«ı without a dot» is a vowel of the Turkish script, read as “uh (the lax vowel of ‘undo’)”. A lax uh, duller than the u of “cup” and made without lip-rounding. For example, in the word “kızım” — my daughter. The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. Its capital is I with no dot. The world writes “Istanbul” with exactly this capital; in Turkish the city is İstanbul. It appears, for example, in the word “hayır” — no.
In short
| Character | I ı |
| Name | ı without a dot |
| Sound | uh (the lax vowel of “undo”) |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 11th of 29, its neighbours in the course are h and i, appears in roughly every fifth word on this site.
How to type ı
- On a phone: add the Turkish keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0131 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 0131.
- Unicode code point: U+0131. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A lax uh, duller than the u of “cup” and made without lip-rounding
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.
- kızımmy daughter
The character in the “eight vowels instead of five” group
The whole grammar rests on them: an ending bends to the last vowel of the stem (vowel harmony). Back vowels — a, ı, o, u; front vowels — e, i, ö, ü.
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 «ı without a dot» it is “uh (the lax vowel of ‘undo’)”, as in the word “kızım”), 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 ı read?
As “uh (the lax vowel of ‘undo’)” — it is a vowel of the Turkish script. A lax uh, duller than the u of “cup” and made without lip-rounding. For example, in the word “kızım” — my daughter.
What is the letter ı called?
I without a dot. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Turkish script: it is called “ı without a dot” and reads as “uh (the lax vowel of ‘undo’)”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.