# accent



## mrt_265

I've just started to learn Greek and I'm in trouble with the accent. For example: I can't understand  the difference between καλός and κάλος. I should read the letter with accent as it has a circumflex? Thank you.


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## parakseno

I'm afraid I don't understand your question. 

"κάλος" and "καλός" are different in pronunciation as well as in meaning. The fist one is stressed on the alpha, the second one on the omicron. Other than that there is no other difference in pronunciation. Modern Greek has only one type of accent (the acute) as since 1982, if I'm not mistaken, the other accent marks disappeared from writing (therefore, no circumflex in writing as well).

κάλος - is a noun and it means "callus"
καλός - is an adjective and it means "good"

EDIT: Just checked, it's 1982 indeed.


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## Outsider

You need to learn a bit about stress (or accent), a linguistic feature which is predictable in Turkish, but not in Greek. Listening to sound files might help you.


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## mrt_265

ευχαριστώ


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## jaxlarus

Outsider said:


> You need to learn a bit about stress (or accent), a linguistic feature which is predictable in Turkish, but not in Greek. Listening to sound files might help you.



I wouldn't say stress is predictable in Turkish and not in Greek! It's rather the opposite! Turkısh doesn't really have a stress, at least as 'heavy' as in other languages, but rather an 'intonation', and sometimes not even the natives themselves agree on where the stress is. See here. 

The stress is always marked in Greek whenever needed, thus making it very easy to know how to read a word, even an unfamiliar one:

π*ό*τε / ποτ*έ*
μ*ί*σος / μισ*ό*ς
θ*ό*λος / θολ*ό*ς
μ*ό*νος / μον*ό*ς
*ά*λλα / αλλ*ά*
...


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## mrt_265

jaxlarus said:


> I wouldn't say stress is predictable in Turkish and not in Greek! It's rather the opposite! Turkish doesn't really have a stress, at least as 'heavy' as in other languages, but rather an 'intonation', and sometimes not even the natives themselves agree on where the stress is.


I think that's right.In Turkish It's a bit difficult to decide on the accent is on which syllable.


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## Outsider

jaxlarus said:


> The stress is always marked in Greek whenever needed, thus making it very easy to know how to read a word, even an unfamiliar one:


You can predict stress from spelling in Greek, but you can't predict it if you've never read or heard the word before. 
Like other "stress-less" languages, Turkish regularly stresses most words on the same syllable (the first one, if I remember well). Or at least that's what it sounds like to speakers of languages with free stress.


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## jaxlarus

Outsider said:


> You can predict stress from spelling in Greek, but you can't predict it if you've never read or heard the word before



I'm sorry, I can't follow you here... I must have read that line more than 10 times but I don't seem to be able to understand your point.

From my experience as a Greek teacher (even to non-natives), anyone with a good knowledge of the accentuation rules in Greek is able to read *any *given word printed in minuscules and properly accented, even if s/he has no clue about the meaning of it.


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## Outsider

I'm not talking about reading written words, and I don't believe Mrt_265 is either. I thought that was kind of obvious, but evidently it wasn't...


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## mrt_265

As a matter of fact,I cannot understand if it's not written


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## Outsider

Jaxlarus and I have discussed this a little further by private message, and I see now that I hadn't been clear enough before, so I'll attempt to explain this better. Perhaps the confusion is partly my fault. I linked to an article on Wikipedia which is actually not very clear.

In some languages, stress can be predicted by the phonetic structure of a word. For example, Finnish always stresses the first syllable of a word, no matter what the word is. These languages are said to have fixed word stress (or accent).

But words don't need to be stressed always on the same syllable in fixed-stress languages. In Latin, stress could fall on the second or the third syllable counting from the last, but it could always be predicted from a rule related to the length of the vowels in the last syllables. Classical Latin was also a language with fixed stress.

Most Romance languages, Greek, and English, by contrast, are languages with free stress, where the position of the stressed syllable cannot be predicted from other phonetic characteristics of the word.

Of course, stress can be predicted from the spelling, but that's only because the orthography of those languages was devised to indicate stress explicitly (with an acute accent, in the case of modern Greek and Spanish). But we must distinguish orthography, which is a convention, from pure linguistics.

My interpretation of mrt_265's question was that he noticed that Greek is a language with free stress, while Turkish is a language with fixed stress, and was confused because when he speaks he doesn't automatically know where to stress each word without having to read it. In Turkish, stress is usually on the last syllable, but in Greek it can fall on any of the last three syllables. The position of the stress must be memorized along with the spelling of each word in Greek, while in Turkish that is not necessary.

For example, in Greek a word composed of the phonemes /kalo/ can have two different kinds of stress: on the first syllable (kálo), or on the second syllable (kaló). In a language like Turkish this is not possible. The stress of a word with this sequence of sounds would normally be on the last syllable (kaló). In other languages where stress is not relevant, I suppose that stress may be arbitrary (kálo = kaló), but the point is that their phonology won't allow you to distinguish the two types of stress from each other.

I hope I was clearer this time around.

P.S. One more thing: are there no audio files online where you can type Greek words to listen to how they're pronounced? That would help you to understand stress and to memorize the stress of each word.


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## modus.irrealis

jaxlarus said:


> From my experience as a Greek teacher (even to non-natives), anyone with a good knowledge of the accentuation rules in Greek is able to read *any *given word printed in minuscules and properly accented, even if s/he has no clue about the meaning of it.


You mean "any" in terms of the accent right, not overall pronunciation? But even there, there are some slight mismatches between speech and writing. Right now I can only think of μια φορά κι έναν καιρό, where έναν is stressed on the second syllable (at least by the speakers around me). There are some other examples that come to mind but they seem to be due to the metre of a poem/song overriding the normal accentuation -- hmm... maybe that's the case with my example as well.


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## mrt_265

Outsider said:


> For example, in Greek a word composed of the phonemes /kalo/ can have two different kinds of stress: on the first syllable (kálo), or on the second syllable (kaló). In a language like Turkish this is not possible.


As a native Turkish speaker I should say that's possible in Turkish.With a basic example:Aydın'a gittim has two meanings:I went to Aydın(a male proper noun or a city)Here accent is important.Unfortunately in Turkey there aren't enough materials for Greek learners


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## Outsider

> Here accent is important.


Which are the stressed syllables in each word, in the two versions of the sentence?


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## mrt_265

Áydın'a gittim=I went to Aydın(city),Aydín'a gittim=I went to Aydın(proper noun)aydin means intellectual at the same timeWe can say it for Úşak/uşák(city/servant) too.I think there are more examples but I remember them for now


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## Outsider

Well, it looks like accent is phonemic in Turkish, too, after all. Although that may be explainable by the use of suffixes... but it's still there.


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## mrt_265

As you can see here both sentences have the same suffix:-a(dative)It may be about proper nouns


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## avok

*Hi mrt 265,* you are right, you can say "Áydın'a gittim=I went to the city of Aydın, Aydín'a gittim=I went to Aydın's (proper noun) but still the accent is so *"light"* in Turkish. Most speakers can't tell the difference between the two. 

But in languages like Portuguese and Greek the accent is so clear that you have to learn them by heart.

As a general rule Turkish is a fixed-stress language but even so not all words don't need to be stressed always on the same syllable just like the example you gave. Aydın vs Aydın. And even then the difference between Aydín and Áydın is sooo subtle. 

I noticed that usually the "*city names*" have this different stress in Turkish "Aydın, Uşak, Bodrum" vs. the other "aydın, uşak, bodrum". There must be a reason why those city names have the stress on the first syllable instead of the typical/fixed "last syllable".

I think French would be more fixed than Turkish in this case.


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## mrt_265

I think we can say it for lots of proper nouns: Dilek/dilek,Murat(my name)/murat,Sevgi/sevgi....There are lots of nounsBut as Avok said it's not so strong in Turkish..At least it is lighter than accent in Greek


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## ireney

Well let's see if this will help  Murat = Μουράτ in Greek. Since I don't know many Turkish words and I'm afraid some of the ones I know maybe well, shall we say dated?  let's go with some names I'm familiar with. (I can do a few more first names too and if I have an answer to an older PM still I can do quite a few!)

 Instanbul = Ινστανμπούλ. Kemal Atatourk = Κεμάλ Ατατούρκ. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan = Ρετσέπ Ταγίπ Ερντογάν. Ismir = Ισμίρ. Galatasaray = Γαλατά Σαράι Fenerbahce = Φενερμπαχτσέ 

Does this help?


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## jaxlarus

ireney said:


> Well let's see if this will help  Murat = Μουράτ in Greek. Since I don't know many Turkish words and I'm afraid some of the ones I know maybe well, shall we say dated?  let's go with some names I'm familiar with. (I can do a few more first names too and if I have an answer to an older PM still I can do quite a few!)
> 
> *İ*nstanbul = Ινστανμπούλ. Kemal Atat*ü*rk = Κεμάλ Ατατούρκ. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan = Ρετσέπ Ταγίπ Ερντογάν. *İ*smir = Ισμίρ. Galatasaray = Γαλατά Σαράι Fenerbah*ç*e = Φενερμπαχτσέ
> 
> Does this help?



...Er I'm afraid it won't help him!  Mostly because you used many place-names, which don't follow the general accent rule in Turkish that sets stress on the last syllable! 
And then you used the way *we *stress these words in Greek...

Most place-names in Turkish are stressed on the first syllable:

*Ánkara*,* Bódrum*,* Mármaris*,*Ízmir*...

Some exceptions:

*İstánbul*, *Diyárbakιr*, *Antákya*, *Antálya*, *Edírne*, *Kastámonu*, *Amásya   *

(I can't type an acute accent over *İ* and *i *so I used *Í* and *í* respectively)

And then... *Érdoğan*, *Galatásaray*, *Fenérbahçe*.

* Mrt*:

Is it when people *pronounce *a word in Greek that you don't understand where they stress it? I.e. in spoken language? I've got Outsider doing an 'assignment' concerning that, and maybe you should go through the same...homework!

We'd be glad to help, so don't hesitate to ask.


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## ireney

Urgh! First of all sorry for the spelling mistakes! Poor Turkish language! Yet another one suffering on my hands. My apologies.

Urght no2! It really didn't occur to me that we might put the stress in these words in different place than the Turks! Doesn't make much sense does it? I really thought we'd follow their intonation.


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## mrt_265

yes,I think so.Thanks ireney


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## mrt_265

It wasnt for poor Turkish!!i'll check it!I found a dictionary!It pronounces the words,it helps me a lot


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