LingoflyĞ ğ — yumuşak g, the “soft g”
«yumuşak g, the ‘soft g’» is a consonant of the Turkish script. It has no sound of its own: it stretches the vowel standing before it. For example, in the word “sağ” — right (the direction). The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. Dağ sounds like “daa”, öğrenmek like “öö-renmek”, with a long ö. No word can begin with it. It appears, for example, in the word “sağ” — right.
In short
| Character | Ğ ğ |
| Name | yumuşak g, the “soft g” |
| Sound | no sound of its own (lengthens the vowel) |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 9th of 29, its neighbours in the course are g and h, appears in 267 words of this site.
How to type Ğ ğ
- 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+011F 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 011F.
- Unicode code points: ğ — U+011F, Ğ — U+011E. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
It has no sound of its own: it stretches the vowel standing before it
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.
- right (the direction)
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 «yumuşak g, the ‘soft g’» it is “no sound of its own (lengthens the vowel)”, as in the word “sağ”), 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 ğ read?
No sound of its own (lengthens the vowel). It is a consonant of the Turkish script. It has no sound of its own: it stretches the vowel standing before it. For example, in the word “sağ” — right (the direction).
What is the letter ğ called?
Yumuşak g, the “soft g” is what this character is called when the alphabet is recited aloud.