# Allophones of 'k'



## sufler

Merhaba,
I was watching the movie "Fetih 1453" to practice my Turkish listening skills.
In one scene I could swear I heard Sultan Mehmet saying "Biz Kuran'ın *hiç*...", because I have clearly caught the sound *ç* in his statement. To my surprise, when I checked original Turkish subtitles to the movie, I found out that the real word he said was *hükmüne*. But then, I listened his phrase over and over 5 times and I still could hear *ç* in what he said. I checked out on Forvo the pronunciation of the word hüküm, but that guy again pronounces it more like "ts" sound in the middle (I can hear Polish "c" or Russian ц there) - [hütsüm]. I listened to Azer Bülbül's song "Hüküm Giymişim" as well and I am also sure that he pronounces the sound like ç- *hüçüm*. So what is the cause of such unusual pronunciation? I haven't come across this thing described in any book for Turkish language. Are there more words of Arabic origin with different pronunciation of letters than usual?

Attachments:
*Forvo pronunciation: http://www.forvo.com/word/hüküm/#tr


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## Arabus

Turkish k is pronounced [c] (voiceless palatal stop) near front vowels. The same applies to g which is pronounced [ɟ].


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## sufler

Could you give more examples of words like this?


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## Arabus

ikna (et-) ‘convince’, ekle- ‘add’, eksi ‘minus’, keçi ‘goat’, kömür ‘coal’, iki ‘two’, sök- ‘dismantle’, bölük ‘squadron’, erk ‘power’

Source: _TURKISH: A COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR, Aslı Göksel and Celia Kerslake_


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## sufler

hmm.. but I listened to "eklemek" pronunciation on Forvo and it seems to have normal "k" inside :/ 
but as for _ikna _that's true, it's really pronounced as [_içna_]


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## Arabus

It seems to me that Turkish speakers have variant ways of pronunciation.

The sound /e/ is supposed to have three allophones (it is supposed to have three different pronunciations according to the source I mentioned above), but in reality there are speakers who don't make the distinctions.


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## stonerain

@sufler;

I listened all the videos and sounds those you gave in the links but
I don't hear any kind of 'ç' sound there or Russian ц there. I don't know
why you hear that.


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## Rallino

When the _k_ is next to a soft vowel, it's pronounced the way you described it. This is best seen in the word _mükemmel_, where the _k_ is pronounced in a liquid way: However, I wouldn't call it a _ç_ exactly. I'd say it has a small amount of _ş_ in it.
I pronounce the _k_ in _ikna_ and in _eklemek_ the same way.


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## ancalimon

When we say hüküm, the k sound is precisely the q sound. I think when a "k" comes after "e,i,ö,ü"  that is always the "q" sound. But unfortunately we don't have the q sound in our alphabet to differentiate between those two. I think we really should add the q letter to our alphabet.


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