This week, I had my first meeting with my language partner, Hazal. We started by learning basic greetings. I learned how to say: “hello” (merhaba), “how are you?” (Nasilsiniz), “I’m fine” (Iyiyim), “thank you” (Tesekkür ederim), and many other phrases. Hazal and I practiced having a conversation in Turkish by greeting each other. In Turkish, I would introduce myself by saying “Benim adim Brenda” or “Ben Brenda”, which both mean “my name is Brenda” or “I am Brenda”. Hazal also showed me videos on youtube consisting of other native Turkish speakers pronouncing certain words or phrases and other non-native speakers attempting to learn the language, just as I was.
I also attempted to learn the Turkish alphabet. There are letters in the English alphabet that are not present in the Turkish alphabet. These are: q, w, and x. There are also some letters in the Turkish alphabet that are not present in the English alphabet. There are two types of c’s, two types of g’s, two types of i’s, two types of o’s, two types of s’s, and two types of u. The c in the Turkish alphabet can make a j sound or “ch” sound. The c that makes the “ch” sound is noted with a symbol on the bottom, “ç”. The second type of g is called a yumusak g, and it is a silent letter. There is a slight indent above the g, and it carries the sound of a vowel prior to it. One interesting thing about the two different i’s is that they sound similar to vowels in the Korean language. One i has no dot above it and it makes a “uh” sound, and the i with a dot above it makes a “ee” sound. I had the most trouble pronouncing ö and ü. Hazal explained to me that ö sounds similar to vowels in the word “bird”, without the “r” sound. Hazal and I also watched Youtube videos to help me hear the different sounds of the alphabet. Watching the videos and repeating after the sounds definitely helped the sounds become more familiar.
I plan to build on what I have learned this week by writing down an example of a conversation and making the newly learned vocabulary stick with me. Additionally, I will record a conversation and play both roles to help with my pronunciation. I will also rewatch the videos I watched in class, especially with the alphabet, to continuously hear how the letters should sound to help me read Turkish words. I noticed a lot of familiarities between the Turkish language and the Korean language. I plan to use my knowledge in Korean to help familiarize Turkish words and phrases I am unfamiliar with. For example, I write down the pronunciation of Turkish words in Korean rather than English.
Replies
The letters O Ö U and Ü are very hard to distinguish and say. Three years on, I still do not say them perfectly. While I am sure that you will learn them faster than me, I wanted to say that you are not alone in this difficulty. A recommendation I would give would be to look at the phonetic alphabet from last semester and compare that with a chart of Turkish letters and their IPA equivalents. I found a website that allows you to click on the IPA symbol to hear how it sounds. If you find the IPA equivalent to the Turkish letter and find that letter on the IPA charts, then you should have an idea as to how to say that letter, inşallah. Here are links to both:
http://www.ipachart.com/
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/turkish.htm