# Günaydın - Where's the accent?



## badgrammar

Another question about pronunciation spurred by my recent travels:  When I first learned to say "Günaydin", I am quite certain that everybody said "gunAYdin", with the stress on the second syllable. 

However, this time, when I said it like that, one person kept correcting me, saying "(tongue cluck, then) GünayDIN".  

I am confused then.  Which is it?  I know that, normally in Turkish, the accent is on the last syllable, as has been recently discussed in the thread on accent.  

But I'm pretty sure that before I always heard this word with the stress on the "ay". So then I wondered if perhaps, when the first person says "GünAYdin", the second says "GunayDIN", to stress the response part (as if to say "good morning to YOU").

Or could it be a regional accent thing? 

Alright, I know, it's not the most important question on the boards , but it did bug me that I kept getting corrected on it this time, whereas nobody ever corrected me on it before...


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## mrt_265

I don't know why he/she corrected you,because i think accent is on ''nay''.At least,I say 'güNAYdın'' too


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## badgrammar

Thanks mrt, that backs up what I thought...  SO the question remains - is it a regional thing, is it because when you answer "güNAYdin" some expect you to say "GünayDIN", or was it because this person was just messing with my mind  ?

It was hard to try out my Turkish with the people in this particular situation (this was the crew on the boat we were on for a week).  They seemed to only want to speak to me in ENglish, always answered me in English, and amongst themselves, they intentionally spoke very quickly and in slang so that I could not understand (later they told me this).  

I think they did not want me to be able to understand their conversations.  Now I wish I had not said anything in Turkish the first few days, so they would have talked normally and I could have eavesdropped on their conversation.  Then after a few days I would have started the day off with "Günaydin!  Nasilsin?  Ve ben? Iyiyim... Bügun nerede gidiyoruz?" That would have been really funny!!!

They were very nice anyway...


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## piety1

i am in the same idea also. i think the stress is on the "nay". but i think you stressed too much on the "nay". that may be the reason s/he corrected you. when one has put too much stress on one of the syllables, it comes strange to the ear.


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## Grosvenor1

Every Turkish speaker I have ever heard stresses it on the second syllable. Not a very heavy stress, but it is clearly on that syllable. Turkish is not as heavily stressed as English, and Turkish speakers using English sometimes talk in what sounds like an unstressed monotone.


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## badgrammar

Yes, maybe too much stress on the "nay"... but it is a word I learned many trips to Turkey before, and spoken, not written, so really I just repeated what I heard.  Certainly I had never heard it with such a strong stress on the "din" part, as he told me.


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## mrt_265

badgrammar said:


> Thanks mrt, that backs up what I thought...  SO the question remains - is it a regional thing, is it because when you answer "güNAYdin" some expect you to say "GünayDIN", or was it because this person was just messing with my mind  ?


I don't think it's not regional,it's generally used soIt must be about your friend


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## ukuca

We sometimes lengthen the AY part like "Günaaydın", maybe that was the situation. Still, I confirm that the stress is on the AY part.


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## piety1

Grosvenor1 said:


> Every Turkish speaker I have ever heard stresses it on the second syllable. Not a very heavy stress, but it is clearly on that syllable. Turkish is not as heavily stressed as English, and Turkish speakers using English sometimes talk in what sounds like an unstressed monotone.


 


   ja, that is absolutely true. Turkish is not as heavily stressed as English. That is why we have difficulty in pronounciating some words rightly which leads us to have accented speech. do you know any way to deal with this problem  or any suggestions??


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## Grosvenor1

It's not a problem - it's just one of the ways I can distinguish a Turkish speaker. French speakers sometimes do the same thing. Whereas English and Russian have heavy stresses.


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## badgrammar

It's funny because I have found - and my Turkish is grammatically very poor - that if I mimic a French "banlieusard" intonation (like young, suburban and slang way of speaking), my pronunciation of individual words and sentences comes out sounding almost native...  Which is to say that if I just say a couple of words or a phrase that I know is correct, people ask if I'm Turkish.   I really find that that particular French accent and the Turkish intonation are very, very similar.


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## Grosvenor1

Interesting that you can lose the accent. All the foreign languages I speak, it doesn't seem to matter which, I still sound like I'm from Scotland...


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## avok

badgrammar said:


> Another question about pronunciation spurred by my recent travels: When I first learned to say "Günaydin", I am quite certain that everybody said "gunAYdin", with the stress on the second syllable.
> 
> However, this time, when I said it like that, one person kept correcting me, saying "(tongue cluck, then) GünayDIN".
> 
> I am confused then. Which is it? I know that, normally in Turkish, the accent is on the last syllable, as has been recently discussed in the thread on accent.
> 
> But I'm pretty sure that before I always heard this word with the stress on the "ay". So then I wondered if perhaps, when the first person says "GünAYdin", the second says "GunayDIN", to stress the response part (as if to say "good morning to YOU").
> 
> Or could it be a regional accent thing?
> 
> Alright, I know, it's not the most important question on the boards , but it did bug me that I kept getting corrected on it this time, whereas nobody ever corrected me on it before...


 
Ahhhh badgrammaaaaaaaaaar!!!!!

Yes I agree with all above, the accent falls on "nay" of "günaydın" but:

Some girls "uptalk" when they speak so they always kindda put the accent on the last syllable. Well , actually it is not an accent but rather some sort of intonation. For instance:

-Gün*ay*dın!!
-the girl: Gü*nay*dııııııııııııııın 

-*me*raba
-the same girl: *me*raba*aaaaaaa*

For example here the girl is up talking

But in Turkish the stress is very light but native English speakers have this urge to put accent on one of the sylablles of any given word.

If you are not sure about the accent just pronounce the word without accent  in a monotonous way


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## Grosvenor1

I do know a Turkish/Kurdish man aged about 50 who stresses the last syllable in _günaydın  _a bit when he greets you. But it seems to be a bit like an English speaker saying, "Helloooo." A kind of cheerful affectation.


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## avok

badgrammar said:


> It's funny because I have found - and my Turkish is grammatically very poor - that if I mimic a French "banlieusard" intonation (like young, suburban and slang way of speaking), my pronunciation of individual words and sentences comes out sounding almost native... Which is to say that if I just say a couple of words or a phrase that I know is correct, people ask if I'm Turkish. I really find that that particular French accent and the Turkish intonation are very, very similar.


 
Yes, for some reason the stress system of French and Turkish are very similar. For instance we have some borowings from French like "televizyon, radyo, psikolo*ji*, psikolo*jik*" and we pronounce them almost as in French not because people know French but because of the similar stress pattern. Whereas in Portuguese, one of the closest relatives of French, the accent is "psicolo*gi*a" but "psico*ló*gico " not "psicolo*gi*co"

I don't understand why the crew did not want you to understand them ? Were they all right?


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## jake94086

as a turk learning french..i've been told by natives that i can speak it with almost no accent..the trick for me has been not only that the french intonation/accent is almost the same as in turkish, but also to listening well so as to say the vowels correctly..french vowels are closed forms of turkish vowels...same mouth opening but different sounds..i believe these two elements help speaking a language w/o an accent....on the GUNAYDIN word..my two cents is that, the accent is on BOTH on NAY and DIN..so the correcty pronunciation would be gu-Nay-DIN with an accented N and accented DIN. The reason being that turkish is a language constructed by adding prefixes to root words...GUN means 'day' in turkish, and one of the meanings of ayDIN is 'brightened'...and when combined, it turns into gu-Nay-DIN  (insinuating : the day is brightened...or the day has started)..on another word.where the root itself is two syllables..the accent is naturally on the second syllable (i.e. aRIza : means system breakdown, or meLEke: means sense, or kahRAman: means victorious...etc etc)


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## fahte

The proper way of pronouncing the word is putting the stress on the last syllable. But it's also common among people to lengthen the second syllable and to put the stress on it. The latter might be a cuter way of saying "günaydın"; but the former is definitely the proper one as I said.


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## jake94086

Fahte - ur right..I correct myself..late night posting should not be allowed . OK here's my new two cents: If the first syllable is a word/root itself, its last letter could be accented as well as the last syllable. One can say guNayDIN or gunayDIN...If the word has multiple syllables that are not words/roots, if it's two syllables, it's the second one, and if it's three syllables it's the last one that gets accented. so my examples need to be corrected:ariZA, meleKE, kahraMAN,


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## acemi

I have also experienced such 'correction' from only one particular person.  He was someone who tried to help my pronunciation.  I worked out that I would de-emphasize the 'ı' so really i was saying günaydn.  My friend would repeat the word emphasizing the 'dın' to prompt me to pronounce it fully.  
In terms of stress, it seems that there is a rise in pitch at 'nay' and a rise in loudness at 'dın'


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## zorspas

fahte said:


> The proper way of pronouncing the word is putting the stress on the last syllable. But it's also common among people to lengthen the second syllable and to put the stress on it. The latter might be a cuter way of saying "günaydın"; but the former is definitely the proper one as I said.



I totally agree. I guess it is possible to put the stress on which syllable you want but the true version should be "günayDIN".


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## ateaofimdomar

Hi all,
just a quick question: I think that Turkish in general stresses all vowels in a sentence, and the outcome is a speech that doesn't sound overstressed, like most of you said. So, wouldn't it be correct to say that in this word one should pronounce all vowels in a way that they can be heard separately? (I don't know if I made my self very clear, so please feel free to ask if I confused you )



avok said:


> Yes, for some reason the stress system of French and Turkish are very similar. For instance we have some borowings from French like "televizyon, radyo, psikolo*ji*, psikolo*jik*" and we pronounce them almost as in French not because people know French but because of the similar stress pattern. Whereas in Portuguese, one of the closest relatives of French, the accent is "psicolo*gi*a" but "psico*ló*gico " not "psicolo*gi*co"


Actually, all these words are Greek (with the exception of televizyon, of which only the first half is Greek). Portuguese pronunciation is closest to Greek, whereas the French pronuciation is not, because French only stresses the last syllable of all of its words. I think Turkish also stresses the last syllable because it has borrowed these words from French and, therefore, kept the French stress.


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## zorspas

ateaofimdomar said:


> Hi all,
> just a quick question: I think that Turkish in general stresses all vowels in a sentence, and the outcome is a speech that doesn't sound overstressed, like most of you said. So, wouldn't it be correct to say that in this word one should pronounce all vowels in a way that they can be heard separately?



You might be right about that.

And for the words, dictionary says they are French originated. Actually there are too many loan words in Turkish (_from French, English, Arabic, Persian_,_ Greek_) (an example for Greek is "İstanbul" which is originated in Greek: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Istanbul_)

The pronunciation also depends on the word's origin, I guess. 

An example : 

1- hala : aunt
2- hâlâ : still 

Both words are from Arabic, but the "â" is mostly not used anymore. But if you mean the second meaning of the word you should pronounce it as "_haaalaaa_", and you should read like that even if it written as "_hala_"(you have to get the meaning from the context).


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## ateaofimdomar

Wow, thanks for the quick reply! Yes, I know about the ^ accent.


zorspas said:


> And for the words, dictionary says they are French originated.


As for that, and I don't mean to argue too much, you are right, but the original words are Greek and came into Turkish (and other languages maybe) via French. I'm only saying this to explain why it is pronounced differently in Portuguese or English, for example.This is the case for most scientific and medicine related words (elektrik, mikrop, gynekolog, psikolog, anatomi, trapez etc. etc.) However, as they came via French, it is normal that they be stressed in the last syllable. This happens with French loans in all languages (in Greek, French loanwords are mostly fashion-related)
http://projetbabel.org/ellenika/lexique.htm#P


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## zorspas

ateaofimdomar said:


> Wow, thanks for the quick reply! Yes, I know about the ^ accent.



You are welcome. Yes that is possible the word passed to French from Greek and then to Turkish. I checked another dictionary for "psikoloji", yes it says it passed French from Greek. (http://www.turkcesozluk.org/search....&abbr_3=0&abbr_4=0&abbr_5=0&abbr_6=0&author=0)

It won't be surprising to say that a word is Greek originated since Ancient Greek is accepted as the foundation of Western World and for some reason as the "_default_" civilization on the world.

By the way, I think you have much knowledge on Turkish Grammar than me.


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