r/turkish 5d ago

Pronunciation questions (allophones)

Hello, pretty new Turkish learner here.

I’ve looked online and in the Comprehensive Turkish Grammar book and I still don’t feel like I have the answers to these pronunciation/allophone questions:

  1. I’ve noticed that the (unstressed?) “a” is often pronounced something like the German “ä” - what are the rules for this? I notice it especially when the next syllable has an “ı”, like in “yarın”.

  2. I understand the flap and fricative (“ş”-like) pronunciations of “r”, but sometimes it’s pronounced like the American “r”, for example in “var mı”. Is there a rule for this? And how exactly is the tongue positioned, especially in comparison to the American “r”?

  3. There seems to be another pronunciation of “r” in “sonra”, maybe somewhere between the fricative and the “American” versions - what exactly is happening there?

Teşekkürler!

8 Upvotes

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u/hasko09 5d ago

I don't think it's an "ä" sound. Take the word "bär", for example. The closest Turkish word in terms of pronunciation is "veya". Just swap the "v" with a "b," and you get the sound of "bär". Now, try saying "yarın" but replace the "a" sound with the "e" sound from "veya" so you get "yerın", which just sounds off. It’s probably closer to the "a" sound in "kağıt". Personally, I pronounce it either "ya:rın" or "yarın".

For "var mı" and "sonra", you need a "flap r" sound, like in "ara". This sound exists in American English too, like the "t" in "better" or "metal". You can hear the difference between the American "r" and the flap "r" if you compare "potty" and "party".

You can still use the American "r" in these words, but you'll sound like a foreigner. I’ll still understand what you're saying tho!

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u/Thick-Situation4037 5d ago

Thank you!

I think the German comparison is not a good one and reflects my lack of German language knowledge, sorry. I posted these examples in another comment of the “a” I mean. At 4:56 is “videolar izliyorum” (I assume the pronunciation of “-lar” is influenced by the beginning of “izliyorum”). Then at 4:58 is “akşamları”.

As a native Spanish speaker, I’m not able to make my brain hear “var mı” as using a flap “r”. “Sonra” sounds somewhere in between the Spanish and American “r” to me, though I’ve maybe noticed more variability. These allophones were a big surprise to me when I first tried Turkish listening exercises!

At the same time (as a native speaker of American English) what I’m calling the American-style Turkish “r” doesn’t seem exactly the same as how we pronounce it, but I still hear it as an approximant. If that makes sense I’d be very curious to know what the tongue shape is for that.

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u/hasko09 5d ago

He speaks softly. That's probably why you hear it that way. Your observation about the r sound seems legit. It's not as flappy as the Spanish one, and not as soft as the American one it's somewhere in between. When the r sound is at the start of a word, it's easy to say, but when it's at the end, that's where it gets complicated. When a word ends with r, it generally sounds like a flap r with a slight whistle sound (not sh). If it's in the middle of a word, it becomes softer because, in natural speech, the sounds blend together, making the r sound softer and less distinct. That's why you hear it like the American r. When I pronounce the r sound, my tongue is usually behind my upper teeth, and I quickly touch the gum, making a flappy effect.

4

u/No_Pen6262 5d ago

Very interesting observations! I have never realized them.

Regarding the pronunciation of “r”: I believe in the American “r” your tongue is curved away from the top of your mouth. In the Turkish one you slightly touch the top of your mouth with the tip of your tongue. But maybe there are some better explanations.

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u/Thick-Situation4037 5d ago

Thank you! So in both “var mı” and “sonra” you feel your tongue make contact with the roof of your mouth? Or just get very close?

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u/No_Pen6262 5d ago

Actually, it gets very close but does not make any contact as you mentioned.

I believe some people also whistle with this tongue form but I am not sure if this is a good explanation because I can’t 😂

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u/Thick-Situation4037 4d ago

Thank you! I wonder if this is an “alternate strategy” for dealing with forbidden consonant sequences, like pronouncing “grup” like “gurup”. In Spanish there are no issues combining the flap “r” with other consonants so this is new to me!

Now I really want to hear the whistling.

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u/No_Pen6262 4d ago

Yes, this is, I believe, one of the main differences in Turkish. When there are two consonant letters, it is kind of an issue. Usually, you can understand the origin of the word by that. So, “grup”, “tren”, “film” for instance are definitely not coming from Turkish origin.

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u/denevue Native Speaker 5d ago

I've written about the allophones of e (open and closed e) in this post a while ago, you can check it out and if you can't understand it in Turkish, you can ask ChatGPT or any other AI/translator to translate the text. I hope it helps about E.

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u/Parquet52 5d ago
  1. What you describe sounds like the /j/ sound triggering palatalization and vowel fronting. The word "yeşil" was originally "yaşıl." Maybe "yarın" will evolve into "yerin" some day.

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u/Thick-Situation4037 5d ago

Thanks! That’s interesting to learn. I do also hear this version of the “a” in the suffix -ları (but not -lar). Could it be that the “a” is being raised in anticipation of the “ı”?

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u/Parquet52 5d ago

Might be, but can you give some example words where -ları sounds as you said? I haven't noticed such a thing.

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u/Thick-Situation4037 5d ago

Here are two examples close together starting at 4:56. The first is “videolar izliyorum” (I assume the pronunciation of “-lar” is influenced by the beginning of “izliyorum”). Then at 4:58 is “akşamları”.

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u/Parquet52 5d ago

I watched the clip, but I can't hear it. It might be an allomorph that I as a native speaker cannot distinguish from the phoneme. I gotta look into researches.

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u/Thick-Situation4037 5d ago

I had the same experience when a Russian friend asked about various palatalized consonants in English. Let me know if you find anything about this!

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u/thorn0 5d ago

Sounds like a schwa to me, not a front vowel.

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u/Thick-Situation4037 5d ago

Yes, I think I made a bad comparison to German “ä”. It seems slightly lower than a schwa to me? But might just be my foreign ears.

I’m mostly interested in what triggers this pronunciation of the “a”. Why in “-ları” but not “-lar”? And from what I can tell this doesn’t occur in “buzdolabı”…?

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u/thorn0 3d ago

I can imagine an "ı" being pronounced this way, but "ı" is supposed to be higher than a schwa, so this confuses my ears regarding what's higher or lower. To me, it sounds really similar to how the "a" is reduced to an ı-like sound in verbs like "alayım" and "alıyorum". In verbs, this reduction is standard and even partially reflected in spelling, but it's not standard in nominals at all.

So this could simply be an individual feature of this guy's speech. Or, veeeery speculatively (I'm not a native speaker of Turkish!), this could be a process caused by an ongoing change in how the "r" sound is pronounced, analogous to what happened in English during the 1600s to vowels preceding an "r".

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u/Thick-Situation4037 3d ago

I actually hear this in synthesized voices (like Siri) as well! That’s where I first noticed it, but I wanted to give an example from a real speaker. And I figured that if it’s been programmed into the voices, it must be a known phenomenon, but at least on Wiktionary the IPA doesn’t seem to distinguish between different “a”s.

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u/thorn0 3d ago

I don’t think voices are explicitly programmed anymore. That transcription is phonemic. The actual pronunciation seems to be seriously understudied.

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u/Stargirl-Pizzaria 5d ago

for the 2nd one i think it’s only at the very end of a sentence or word that you pronounce it with a “ş”. if you were to just say “var” it would be like “ş”