Merhaba herkese,

I have a question about the sound of the letter "e". I noticed that it is pronounced differently in different words and positions. There are at least two ways of pronouncing the letter "e", and I call them open and closed "e" vowel sounds. So, let me give you some examples. Compare the sound of the letter "e" in the following words:

ben vs. benim

her vs. ev

neden vs. çiçek

Now you should now what I am talking about. I was wondering if you could give me a list of some of the most common words with the open "e" sound. Also, are there any other suffixes like "-den" that are always pronounced with the open "e" sound? How about the suffix "-ken"? Thank you so much!

You´re right there are two types of e´s in Turkish. It´s impossible to make such a list, though. There are just too many words. As far as I know, there is no site for Turkish phonetic transcriptions, but you can listen to the pronunciation of a word on Google translate I think.

I understand what you mean. I was just hoping for a small list comprising 15-20 most commonly used words or suffixes that use the open pronunciation. Thank you for your answer anyway! I guess I will just have to pay better attention to spoken Turkish on TV and I could also listen to individual words on Forvo (a website where native speakers record themselves pronouncing words)

Merhaba Aurum,

If you noticed, open e sound is found in one syllable words, and the words that has same type of vowels in other syllables. 

Maybe this will help

Thank you.

This rule should be applicable to most situations: 

• pronounce e as open when it appears before consonants "r, l, m, n" which are not followed by a vowel.

examples: 

gerçek (first e open second closed)

genel (first e closed second e open)

(writing from mobile therefore couldnt adjust font size)

This is extremely helpful, thank you ever so much!