Uzun İnce Tarana Yoldayım

Accent VS Alphabet: Pronunciation Paradox Of The Banana Tarana Complex

click on the picture to watch it on youtube

SONGLINE: Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım

YER: Wombatistan, South Of Tarana

prosody analysis, sentence structure

0014 south of tarana | 8:33 | 29 Nov 2020

This video explores how Latin characters often fail to indicate proper pronunciation emphasis, with variations influenced by regional trends. A notable example is the word [banana]. Australians frequently criticize the inconsistency of vowel pronunciation in American English, yet the town of [Tarana] challenges this expectation, when it's pronounced with an Australian accent. Locals will correct you if you mispronounce [Tarana] and make it sound like a [banana], raising the question: does the speech influence inappropriate transcription, or vice versa? Many Australians unfamiliar with Tarana (and other towns they've had no tnagible contact with), will struggle with correct pronunciation that's been shaped by local vogue.

The exercise investigates how different emphasis variations impact the reception of words like [banana] versus [Tarana], experimenting with rhythm, stress change and vowel variations. Such discrepancies can hinder the ability to understand Turkic languages, highlighting the need to learn the different variations in cadence, vowel augmentation, and consonant switching.

The video features a recurring musical motif from a Turkic folk song «Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım» (I'm On A Long & Narrow Road) - which was aiming to embed a sense of presence, despite the overpowering Australian accent. The contrast between the Turkish melody and the Australian accent, created moments where the melody's Turkish quality was difficult to discern. This is how Wombatistan becomes a convenient cultural bucket, that can comfortably accomodate both.

The project was also serving as an exercise in comedic timing and translation, while maintaining Turkish grammatical structure. It was an attempt to examine how thought flow is constructed. The spoken word was difficult to execute, but somewhat effective - when viewed through a poetic lens, rather than conventional speech.

~ My Name Is Ayça, get used to it

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