Turkish-influenced phonological features of the Istanbul Armenian dialect

Abstract

Istanbul Armenians form an ethnic minority in the city of Istanbul. The majority of Istanbul Armenians speak Turkish monolingually or predominantly, with a subset still speaking Western Armenian, an Indo-European language. The Istanbul subdialect of Western Armenian has noticeable differences in phonology compared to other Armenian groups. The peculiar accent in Istanbul Armenian is attributed to phonological properties arose from contact with Turkish, which are found in Turkish but largely absent in other Western Armenian groups. We describe these properties, specifically: vowel centralization, stop aspiration, word-final obstruent devoicing, lateral velarization, word-final rhotic frication, and optional word-final lateral frication.