ABSTRACT
Turkey (Türkiye), with a population over 80 million, is a nation that spans from Asia to Europe, a region where Eastern and Western cultures merge. Historically, this region has been linguistically rich, hosting many languages throughout the Ottoman period and the following Republic of Turkey. Currently, a total of 40 languages are associated with Turkey, with 39 of them being living languages (Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2020). Turkey does not have a colonial history with English-speaking countries, which categorises it as an Expanding Circle country in Kachruvian terms. The only official and the most widely spoken language in Turkey is Turkish, which is the mother tongue for about 90% of the population (Kornfilt, 2009). Other major languages include Kurdish with about 8 million speakers, Arabic with 2.3 million speakers, and Zazaki and Kabardian with 1.5 and 1 million speakers, respectively (Arık, 2020). Today, there are many dialects of Turkish spoken across the different geographical regions of the country, which are usually mutually intelligible, but Istanbul Turkish is thought by many to be the standard variety. Although the features of this variety are defined in a prescriptive way by a national institution called Türk Dil Kurumu (‘Turkish Language Association’), a comprehensive corpus-based description of spoken Turkish is not available (Bayyurt, 2010). It should be noted that the name ‘Istanbul Turkish’ is also a misnomer, as it gives the impression that a standardised variety of Turkish is spoken in Istanbul region. However, this variety, as it is described by Türk Dil Kurumu (‘Turkish Language Association’), is usually not what one will hear in the streets of Istanbul, where it is more probable to hear a mix of Turkish dialects, along with other languages.
