The effects of geographical distance on dialectal variations of Turkish language in West and East Azarbaijan

The effects of geographical distance on dialectal variations of Turkish language in West and East Azarbaijan

Dialectology studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. The objective of this paper is to provide the reasons for dialectal variations of Turkish language.10 native speakers of Turkish living in different parts of West and East Azarbaijan were participated in this study. Each subject spoke different dialect. All of the participants were female aged between 50 and 70. They were interviewed according to pre-pared questionnaire and asked to provide us with Turkish equivalents of each Farsi word. Then, their answers were compared with each other to find out to what extent they used the same word for the assigned Persian word. Table A and B and C displays the equivalent Turkish words for each Farsi word in each city. These equivalents have been analyzed and according to the results the trend of change in Turkish words get greater as the cities get far from the central city (Tabriz). These changes correspond to the theory of WAVES in linguistics which asserts that the greater the geographical distances from the source, the greater the differences from the center. Far cities have less contact with Tabriz in comparison to near cities, so their dialects are more different from Tabrizian dialect. The reason is the geographical distance.

Dialectology studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. The objective of this paper is to provide the reasons for dialectal variations of Turkish language.10 native speakers of Turkish living in different parts of West and East Azarbaijan were participated in this study. Each subject spoke different dialect. All of the participants were female aged between 50 and 70. They were interviewed according to pre-pared questionnaire and asked to provide us with Turkish equivalents of each Farsi word. Then, their answers were compared with each other to find out to what extent they used the same word for the assigned Persian word. Table A and B and C displays the equivalent Turkish words for each Farsi word in each city. These equivalents have been analyzed and according to the results the trend of change in Turkish words get greater as the cities get far from the central city (Tabriz). These changes correspond to the theory of WAVES in linguistics which asserts that the greater the geographical distances from the source, the greater the differences from the center. Far cities have less contact with Tabriz in comparison to near cities, so their dialects are more different from Tabrizian dialect. The reason is the geographical distance.