S01E19 Cansu Karabiyik, Danish / Kurdish / Turkish speaker - From Copenhagen, Denmark🇩🇰

"What's your mother tongue?" A simple question.. Cansu Karabiyik, our guest this week, replied, "That's a complicated question. I don't really have a national identity anymore."

As a Kurdish/Turkish Danish citizen who studied abroad first in America then at Cambridge University in the UK, Cansu is an example that national identity and our relationship with a language may not always be straightforward.

Cansu in this episode talks to your host Kuan-wen about how she had to adjust her comedy performing style since moving across the pond from London to New York. With such a complex background, how she selectively chooses bits about her to include in her introductory lines to provide the context for subsequent jokes. Your host and the guest also had a gentle dig at the Cambridge University and the world famous Cambridge Footlights club (hopefully all justified after you watch the video - see link below!)

Cansu debating "Cambridge Footlights have NOT ruined British Comedy" (cringe...)

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Follow Cansu on Instagram.

Follow your host Kuan-wen on Instagram and Twitter

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Episode timeline

00:42 Intro

02:14 A Kurdish comedian from Denmark who parents are from Turkey

05:04 Changes to Cansu’s accent since she moved from the UK to New York

06:51 British humour v New York audience

12:42 Kurdish v Turkish v Danish, which one is Cansu’s mother tongue?

14:22 Kuan-wen draws parallels between his Taiwanese and Cansu’s Kurdish

15:23 Cansu’s confusing accent to others

17:12 Unconscious bias to link ethnicity to choice of languages

18:35 How Cansu works with her confusing accent performing comedy

21:33 English is a language reserved for comedy jokes

23:10 Cansu’s straight talking from Danish and Middle Eastern cultures

25:50 Being “other”ed in Denmark and the Danish Ghetto Laws

30:05 Differences between Kurdish people in Turkey/Iraq/Syria/Iran

32:46 Cansu’s Cambridge and Cambridge Footlight experience---------------------------------

Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe