THE PHONETICS OF THRACIAN TURKISH VERNACULAR LINGUISTIC VARIETY

Abstract

Just before a hundred years ago, the Thrace region was the land of the Turks’ European dreams and the apple of the Ottoman Empire’s eye with the cities that grow the most military officers, intellectual downtowns, silver mine beds. Thrace was also the hometown to peaceful people living under the well-protected shades of the Empire, speaking the Turkish language in bazaars, where was brought, settled and populated by Turks from Anatolia after every new conquest. The neighing sounds of Turks’ horses were heard not so long after the beginning of the common era in this meeting point of the Continental Europe and Minor Asia and the area became a "Turkish sovereign" with people coming from Anatolia and the North of the Black Sea. As the variant Turkish population settled diachronically, they naturally have varied dialects from each other. The purpose of this study is to discuss the Turkish subdialects of the Thrace region in detail, which is now to be divided amongst the three countries’ terrains, regarding phonetics. Thus, to what extent did the region, which had been living under different political regimes in the last century, affected the lingustic feature of different neighboring relations of the Turks? It will be tried to be identified.

Keywords

• thracian subdialects
• east thrace
• west thrace
• north thrace
• i̇stanbul subdialect
• standart turkish
• phonetics.