These past two weeks my language partner, Hazal, and I focused on asking locative questions. Buunma durumu (-da) means the locative case. If the word ends in a, i, o, and u, I learned that I add -da to the end. If the word ends in e, i, ö, or ü, I learned that I add -de to the end. It was relatively easy to memorize because this is the same rule as vowel harmony. However, there was a exception to this rule. If the word ends in a voiceless consonant such as “ç, f, h, k, p, s, s, or t”, then the locative case suffix is either “-tA” or “-tE”. For example, if I were asked the question “Ahmet nerede?” (Where is Ahmet?). If I wanted to answer with “He is at the park”, I would say “Ahmet parkta” because park ends with a k.
Then, I practiced combining two concepts: locatives and answering with yes or no. I was reminded that if I wanted to ask a question, I had to add mi or mī (depending on vowel harmony) to the end of the question. For example, if I wanted to ask, Is Ahmet in his office, I would say, “Ahmet ofiste mi?”. If I wanted to answer with the negative, I would say “Hayir, Ahmet ofiste degil”. Hayir means no, and degil is the negative you have to add to the end of a negative answer. I found it a bit confusing that I had to add a negative word although the sentence started with no. However, I practiced a lot of answering locative questions with yes or no with Hazal to help me practice and memorize the concept.
Then, Hazal gave me a practice where I was given two words and I had to ask a locative question and I had to answer the question with a yes or no. This practice was extremely helpful because I had to create the question myself so it was very challenging. For example, I was given two words: bilgisayar (computer) and masa (table). I asked “Bilgisayar masada mi?” which means “is the computer on the table?”. Then I answered with “Yes, the computer is on the table”, which is “Evet, bilgisayar masada”. (Evet means yes). I also studied the exception rule a bit more because I had troubles memorizing which consonants I had to apply the rule to. I was given the words sandalye and ofis, which means chair and office, respectively. I asked “Sandalye ofiste mi?” (Is the office in the chair?) I had to remind myself that s is on the list of consonants in the exception rule.
I also watched food videos in Turkish with Hazal. I think it is very nice to add a bit of culture to the end of our lessons! This week we watched an interesting twist on a traditional Turkish dish. The chef added a lot of cheese to the middle of a meat patty. It looked like a meat pie with cheese in the middle. Hazal explained that most people don’t eat it like this in Turkey, but it was fun to watch what you can do with a traditional dish.
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