Vernacular Antakya Turkish: Antekece

Vernacular Antakya Turkish: Antekece

AKDOGAN, Mehmet
TURKYILMAZ, Ugur

Key words: vernacular, standard language, Antakya dialect, dialect, diglossic community ABSTRACT The objectives of this personal observation based paper is to attract some attention on vernaculars used in Antakya, in Turkey, and therefore special attention is paid to the dialect called ‘Antekece’. There are many vernacular languages because of the ethnicity of the city where Muslim Turks, Kurds and Arabs and Christian Armenians, and Jews and Nusayris among some others who live together peacefully. Antekece generally refers to a vernacular which has not been standardized and which does not have any official status. Based on the personal observations of the Antakya born author, it is concluded that there are two sides of attitudes toward vernacular Antekece, namely the positive side which shows the respectful feelings towards the vernacular language and the second is the negative side which shows the feelings of seeing the vernacular language inferior to the standard dialect. Hence, it is suggested that people from Antakya have positive attitudes towards their vernacular language and use it appropriately in the right spatial and temporal settings. However, how the language attitudes of people in general from Antakya towards this specific vernacular language is and to find out the reasons why it happens the way it does requires further research

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1903