The problem with comparing with UK or US pronunciation, is that even within the UK we say words differently depending which part of the country we come from. Scottish, Welsh, English: all are different vowel sounds. Within England: up north or down south? Even within London, North London, South London and East London all have different accents ... people from Kensington or Chelsea are different again!

I am sure if we recorded our comments rather than typed them that Aenigma, Sonunda, LIR, libralady and I would also say hat slightly differently. Some of us might even start it with a gluttal stop and say ´at!

MarioninTurkey is on the spot. In the East Midlands, people talk like " ´Ave you been too Jaymee´s ´ouse?" for "Have you been to Jaime´s house?" Really! If there is going to be an argument on phonetics, use the Universal Phonetic Alphabets that the standard dictionary uses. The Poles came up with it, I think.

The reason why it is not smart to give a comparison of pronounciation of vowels with an Arabic loanword, is because the ´original word´ is written differently. In Arabic, memur is written with a glottal letter, hemze (i think). This causes a small pause in the word and tehrefore the vowel seems longer.

It is hard to give an exact example of how words in Turkish are pronounced, because when they are from Arabic or Persian origine, their pronounciation depends on the original spelling. For example, officially there is a difference in pronounciation between ben (me) and ben (mole on the skin). The difference in pronounciation derives from original spelling: the n in ben/me is a Nun, the n in ben/mole is a kef. However, these are just details. A general rule in Turkish is that all vowels are pronounced shortly, words of Turkish origine do not know long vowels, they are all short.

The lovely Turkish open e...as someone teaching Spanish to Turkish students, I can say this is a serious issue for us, the open E as in "memur" or "merkez" (I know they aren´t truly Turkish words, but let´s keep it simple) sounds almost like "A" to Spanish speakers (all Spanish E´s are closed like in yemek), and our students often mix up A and E in verb endings, and this is a serious issue in Spanish because substituting A for E or vice-versa in some verb endings switches between the indicative mood, and the subjunctive, which our students learn only during their 3rd year.

But no, as far as I have seen, that sort of intermediate vowel between A and E (the Azeri inverted e letter) doesn´t exist in Turkish.

No qualified Turkish teacher would ever pronounce the word "ben", as "ban".

I have to agree that no matter which accent you speak you can´t say ben as in ban... that is in Azeri only.. 

But I have to also say regardless of where the word is originated from, we have to look at the Turkish language as a whole.  Not everybody knows if memur is a Turkish word or not... So I think it will not be right to generalise the vowels as short sounds except the foreign words, it will just be very confusing as the language learners will have to first try to identify the words origin to properly pronounce it.

I think, one has to learn the words as it is.  The example : ben - me, and ben - mole explains it very well.

So, I believe there are 3 kinds of E in our language:

1. a short closed E as in pen (ex: ben (me))

2. a short open E as in send (though in NZ it would be a close E) (ex: ben (mole))

3. a long closed E as in -ei / -ey (ex: memur) (By the way you can´t say it like meemur, as it will be open and incorrect)

Pronounciation of the two Turkish words.

Ben = me

Ben = mole

are exactly identical.

 Actually, officially they arent  You would hear it only in ´folk tongue´ though. It is kind of like the difference in the last n of ´nörüyon´ and ´napiyon´. Someone in Yozgat saying nörüyon pronounces that n differently than someone from Ankara asking ´napiyon´. It is about the ´original´ sounds of Turkish, though I realise that that is kind of debatable.

However, in nowadays Turkish they are pronounced the same, yes, and my point there was not to teach anyone to pronounce them differently (though so far I have come across 2 persons who do ), but to illustrate why it is cumbersome to give pronounciation-examples for Turkish by giving loanword-examples.

 Deli Kizin how soon have you come to grasp these local variations?

 I had the luck to spend long periods of time in Turkey (9 months in 2006-7 and 6 months this year), and also the chance to work with Turkish people in the Netherlands who usually come from (families from) villages in Turkey and therefore have a more rural accent. Alltogether it took me about 3 years to get where I am now, but I can say that the first 9 months were the ones I learnt most of what I know now.

Regarding "nörüyon" people sometimes swallow the last "n" i think, its also popular in Kastamonu region . But i havent realised any different pronounciation of "ben(me) & ben(mole)" so far. Maybe one shouldnt be a native to realise this ...