Talysh Alphabet & Letters

Talysh is an Iranian language, spoken in the green south-east corner of Azerbaijan around Lənkəran, Astara, Lerik, Masallı and Yardımlı, and across the border in Iran. In Azerbaijan it is written in a Latin alphabet based on Azerbaijani, in the same order: A B C Ç D E Ə F Ğ H X I İ J K Q L M N O P R S Ş T U Ü V Y Z. Speakers learn to read Azerbaijani at school, so the Talysh alphabet uses familiar letter shapes; some letters have different sound values in Talysh, and each sound is written one way.

Ç, Ə, Ğ, I ı, İ i, Ş and Ü are letters of their own, not decorated versions of others: Ə comes after E, Ğ after F, Ş after S, and dotless I ı stands just before dotted İ i. X follows H and Q follows K, both far more common than in English. Ö is not part of the standard Talysh set; if you meet it in a Talysh text, it is usually in a borrowed Azerbaijani word or name.

In Iran, where Talysh is spoken in the Gilan and Ardabil provinces, people who write it use the Persian alphabet instead; those letters are in the Persian collection.

What Ə, Ü, X, Ğ and the other Talysh letters sound like

Ə ə is the open vowel of English "cat", and it appears in the region's own place names: Lənkəran, and Ləvəngi, the stuffed chicken or fish the Lankaran area is known for. Ü ü is a rounded front vowel like German ü: say ee with your lips rounded. I ı without a dot is a short, central i-like vowel, and İ i with a dot is the i of "machine".

X x writes the throaty ch of German "Bach" and Ğ ğ its voiced partner, a soft gargled g: the same sounds that Persian writes with خ and غ. C c is the j of "jam", Ç ç the ch of "church", J j the s of "measure", Ş ş the sh of "ship" and Y y the y of "yes". Q q writes /ɡ/ in the Azerbaijani-based Talysh alphabet.

Dotted İ i and dotless I ı

Talysh shares with Azerbaijani and Turkish the two separate i's. They pair up in their own way: the capital of i is İ (U+0130), and the small form of I is ı (U+0131). Default Unicode casing lowercases İ to i plus a combining dot and uppercases ı to I; Turkish and Azerbaijani casing map i to İ and I to ı.

Programs that apply Azerbaijani or Turkish casing rules get it right; in your own text, the safe way is to copy İ and ı from the grid above. Fonts almost always have both, because Turkish needs them.

How to type Talysh letters on Windows, Mac and phones

Windows, macOS, iPhone and Android have no built-in Talysh keyboard, and none is needed for the Azerbaijani-based alphabet: the Azerbaijani keyboard has every letter. Windows calls it Azerbaijani (Latin), macOS lists it as Azeri, and both iPhone and Android offer Azerbaijani, with keys for ə, ı, ğ, ş, ç and ü. To paste a letter right now, click it above.

Without that layout, Windows Alt codes on the number pad give Ç Alt+0199, ç Alt+0231, Ü Alt+0220 and ü Alt+0252; on a Mac with the US layout, Option+C gives ç and Option+U then u gives ü. For the rest, Microsoft Word turns a code into the letter when you press Alt+X right after it: 018F for Ə, 0259 for ə, 011E/011F for Ğ ğ, 0130 for İ, 0131 for ı and 015E/015F for Ş ş.

In HTML, write Ə as Ə, ə as ə, İ as İ, ı as ı, Ğ ğ as Ğ ğ and Ş ş as Ş ş. Mind the look-alikes: capital Ə is U+018F and its small form is the schwa ə U+0259; the reversed Ǝ ǝ belong to other alphabets, and the Cyrillic Ә ә are different characters that only look the same.

Where the Talysh language is spoken, and its relatives

Talysh lands run along the Caspian coast and up into the Talysh Mountains, on both sides of the Astara river, which has formed the border between Azerbaijan and Iran since the early 19th century. CLDR estimates about a million Talysh speakers in Azerbaijan; counts differ widely between sources, and official census figures are much lower. There are further speakers in Iran and in communities in Russia.

In the Soviet period a Latin alphabet was made for Talysh in the late 1920s and used in schools and print during the 1930s, but Talysh publishing stopped by the end of that decade. When writing in Talysh revived after Azerbaijan's independence, it followed the new Latin alphabet of Azerbaijani.

Talysh belongs to the north-western branch of the Iranian languages. Its neighbours along the Caspian, Gilaki and Mazanderani, are relatives with collections of their own, as are Persian and Kurdish. Azerbaijani, a Turkic language, is a different family, but nearly every Talysh speaker in Azerbaijan also speaks it. The Azerbaijan collection has the country's flag, food and holiday emoji.