insan wrote:Tim Drayton wrote:insan wrote:Tim Drayton wrote:insan wrote:Tim Drayton wrote:insan wrote:Tim Drayton wrote:Thank you for this information.
So,
Lüzüm gitmeyesin is 'you mustn't go', i.e. I am instructing you not to go, and
Lüzum değil gidesin is 'you needn't go', i.e. you can go or stay as you wish.
Is that right?
Both r interpreted same on written texts, Tim. The actual interpretation is maintained with unique TC accentuations and volume of the voice...
An interesting observation. Thanks. I shall pay more attention to accent and tone when listening to the remaining speakers of this fast dying language.
Come on Tim! How did u come to the conclusion that it's fast dying?
Everybody aged under thirty in the north of Cyprus, be they of TC or RoT parentage, speaks a form of Turkish that is very similar to standard Turkish. From what I observe, they have just retained one or two distinctive features of Cypriot dialect, e.g. lack of question particle ('değil?' not 'değil mi?'), first person plural forms ending in 'k' not 'z' ('gideceyik' not 'gideceğiz') and forms ending in 'nan' rather than 'le/la' ('arkadaşımınan' not 'arkadaşımla'), but not much else. Do you not see the assimilation that is going on around you? A study was conducted by an academic at one of the universities in the north. He compiled a list of about 30 TC dialect words and asked people if they recognised them and could explain their meaning. The results were classified by age and, in the case of young people, whether their parents were TC or RoT. The results clearly show that the TC dialect is dying. There was a high level of recognition of these words among very old people, a lower but still high level of recognition amongst middle-aged people and extremely low levels of recognition amongst young people, and this was regardless of whether their parents were TCs or from Turkey. I am afraid that this dialect, which this thread shows to be very rich and expressive, is in its death throes and is probably used more in London and Sydney nowadays than in Cyprus itself.
Tim, urban origin TCs don't know much abt those special TC words and they have never talked with a deep TC accent that villagers talk.
Instead of coming to a conclusion that TC dialect was fast dying; u might have come to a conclusion that TC dialect was fast developing with an intense interaction of contemporary mass media.
You may have a point there. I used to go to a Greek Cypriot barber here in Limassol who was a truly biligual speaker of Greek and Turkish. This man has sadly passed away. He must have been born in the 1920s and grew up in a part of Limassol where Greek and Turkish speakers lived together. I was always struck by the kind of Turkish that he spoke because it was standard rather than Cypriot Turkish. He would never have used any of the features that I described above. His range of vocabulary was amazing as well. Sitting there in that little barbers shop and listening to him speak Turkish you could easily imagine that you were talking to a univeristy graduate from Istanbul or Ankara. This makes me conclude that the city people he learned Turkish from must have spoken a very 'correct' form of the language.
On the other hand, don't we too have the right to have "old TC dialect" and "new TC dialect" like u have " old English" and " new English" to indicate the development of ur language?
How Brits assimilated and by whom to use "new/modern" English?
I sometimes think u r trying to politicize this issue in order to fit it into an assimilation plan.
How accurate is the comparison with, say, English in the UK? Yes, for example the language of Hollywood films and American sitcoms has an influence on the way people speak and Americanisms have crept into British English. To draw a correct analogy one would have to imnagine that half the native British population emigrated (30 million people) then twice the number of American settlers came in (60 million people) so that the majority of the population were now speakers of American English. It is clear that under such circumstances the distinctive British form of English would die.
