THE EFFECT OF AGE AND READING ON RHOTICITY IN KURDISH
THE EFFECT OF AGE AND READING ON RHOTICITY IN KURDISH

Summary/Abstract: Linguistic diversity aspects are frequently seen in speech communities that show systematic differences in the way they speak to different age groups, social classes, ethnic groups and social gender speakers . This study discusses the differences in pronunciations in terms of rhoticity in the speech of the native Kurdish people living in Van, depending on their education level and age. For the study, 64 people were selected from 32 young people (aged between 15 and 25) and 32 elderly people (aged between 50 and 65) and conversations were recorded and analyzed by using unstructured interviews and personal interview methods. The results show that the speakers who read Kurdish texts (books, journals, newspapers ,etc.) group retained their approximations / r / whereas the ones who have never read in Kurdish had a preference for a pronunciation with no / r /. However, there is no effect of age on rhotic or non-rhotic accents in Kurdish. The findings of the research contributed literature on social dialects.

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