Job Discussion Forums

[justme]

This is my first poll, by the way-- I'm curious what others think. For me, the hardest Turkish accent is Black Sea, the further east, the more difficult. After that, I also have a really hard time with young Istanbul people, especially the boys. And I can barely understand a word my husband's (80 year old) grandmother says, and it's not just because she has no teeth-- it sounds like she's singing!

[ghost]

This poll is bizarre, when you take into consideration that the vast majority of posters here understand little or no Turkish, so accent is not really an issue.....and it shouldn`t be, because when Turks speak with foreigners who know ``some`` Turkish, they (the Turks) usually slow the speed of their delivery and try to make concessions to the limited vocabulary of the foreigners.

When ghost travelled to Hatay/Antakya (not Antalya!) and the surrounding areas (in South Eastern Turkey, close to Syrian border), it was interesting to be privy to the amount of Arabic being used, and most inhabitants of the area in Antakya actually spoke Arabic as a first language. One has to remember that the area around there did originally belong to the Syrian State and was annexed by Turkey by force.

The youth in Istanbul and other areas use quite a lot of slang and `buzz words` to embellish their speech, and much of that cannot be learned by foreigners learning Turkish.

For a country as large and diverse as Turkey, variation in accents is not as much of an issue, when compared with the UK for example, where tremendous variation in accents exists between areas such as South West England (Bristol), South East (especially working class ``London``), Birmingham (``brummie``), Lancashire (``liverpudlian``), North East (``geordie``) and other areas.

Also the difference between working class Brits and those who were brought up in the elite private schools (strangely called ``public schools``) is huge.

Compare the accent of Johh Cleese/``Faulty Towers`` (solid middle class/upper) and those characters in ``Coronation street`` and you will have a huge difference in accent.

If you include Scotland in the equation, then the differences are even greater.

[dmb]

I have most problems with younger kids. I don't have a problem with the SE accent as one of my friends(and her 11 kids are from Adana a nd I am exposed to it often. The most annoying is the rich Etiler one..... uff yani acaba

[ghost]

[calsimsek]

Sorry ghost but your wrong. There was no Syrian State until Mid 1940's Hatay was handed over after the French rulers at the time gave the poulation a vote on either staying in the French ruled area or joinning Turkey. Now the vote may have been a bit odd and one can ask how France decided who could vote, yet there was no forced annexation as you stated.

Btw justme a thick black sea accent can drive me made too, as does a real real S.E accent from some where around Bingol or Şirnak.

[dmb]

Ghost it was the same one as Tony Blair

[howmucharefags]

Whits wrang wi Glesga ya bam thit ye ur? Hawfwit.

[justme]

I don't find it a bizarre question at all-- I'm not a super-special langauge learner or anything, but I started noticing accents after about 3 months here. I got the impression that there are several people on this forum (not to mention our dear native speakers) who understand Turkish pretty well, and many others who have at least, if not more than, a fundamental grasp.

And contrary to what ghost claims, there is indeed quite a lot of regional variation (though you wouldn't really notice it after less than a year here)-- it just seems many people code-switch quite a lot, and use a more standard Turkish when speaking to foreigners or to people they don't know well, and their regional dialect with friends, family, and hemşeri.

At first it was the SE accent that really got me-- it's so gutteral and all the vowels are farther back, but now I'm pretty used to it, probably from hearing it so much (though I do still get pretty baffled with the guys that don't speak Turkish very well). And I can't get my head around Black Sea at all-- aside from the lexical differences, it seems all the consonants are more front and all the vowels are more back.

I've polled a lot of students about which accents they like best in certain situations-- while they all generally agree the Istanbul accent makes a person seem more intelligent and educated (like someone they'd want for a doctor or professor), they find the Black Sea accent the most friendly and 'sincere,' maybe like the north midwest accent in the US.

I don't talk to many young kids so I wouldn't know about that, but I have trouble with kids in English too. The Istanbul young-man accent really gets me-- I'm just getting to where I can understand my husband with his friends. It's not just the slang and swearing, it's that they (like young people anywhere, I guess) deliberately elide words til they're barely syllables, like 'Napın?' for 'Ne yapıyorsun?' Add that to all the giggling and I'm lost.

I agree with dmb that the rich Ettiler accent is by far the most annoying-- they almost put Americans to shame with the nasal-ness, almost, and the overwhelming desire to toggle speaker makes it pretty difficult to carry on a conversation... I really wish someone would tape the mouth of that horrible woman in 'Avrupa Yakası,' the one who did the Bellona commercials...

[whynotme]

[whynotme]

i think the most difficult one to understand is Eagean accent(Manisa,Muğla)

once whynotme went to a street market and was looking at the jam which was sold by a mid-aged woman from Mugla and one saw something at bottom the jar and told the woman about it.. the respond given by the woman was:
"cingo�z kavangouzun dibingdegini go�rd�ng" : cing�z kavanozun dibindekini g�rd�n (cing�z=you cleaver one)

[dmb]

Can dmb also start using 3rd person. dmb thinks that the argo between different regions makes understanding difficult.

[Golightly]

[justme]

You're right, whynotme, I forgot the Aegean accent! My husband says that one's pretty hard for him too. He also says he had a hard time understanding his grandma before she lost her teeth...

The word I hate saying most in Turkish is 'kağıt'. The word I like making Turks say the most is 'wavy.'

[dmb]

[justme]

hee hee. Last week my student gave an oral presentation about hard disks, but throughout the presentation he managed to transpose the last 2 letters of disk. I just about bust a gut when he tried to say things like 'high-performance hard disk', 'extra-fast hard disk', 'hard disk drive'...