It’s been a minute since I wrote a learning journal! I had to look back and see what I last wrote about to remind myself!
I am flying, if I do say so myself, through the textbook Merve’s using. We’re just starting Unit 4, which is where she said she ended her class in the fall. I’m keeping up well with a lot of the concepts, as learning languages is one of my strengths. We just finished learning the possessive pronouns and how to say things like “my sister,” and we also finished up a section on learning all the different family members. That was a very interesting lesson because Turkish has so many more titles and specific names for specific family members. For example, in English I’d call my mom’s sister an aunt, but I’d also call her brother’s wife an aunt. In Turkish, I’d call my mom’s sister “teyze” but her brother’s wife would be “yenge.” There’s different names for older siblings as opposed to younger siblings, and a father’s dad as opposed to a mother’s dad. It makes for a confusing family soup, but I really like those lessons because I get some cultural insight as well into how Turkish people view families.
Where I struggle, I think, is retaining vocabulary. Which surprises me, because that’s always been something I’m good at. I think because we’re going so fast, I have less time to put the vocabulary into practice and so I lose words that I should know. I want to do better with that and put more time into studying vocabulary. That’s my next goal. Other than that, I’m still enjoying learning Turkish and I’m excited to see where I’ll be at the end of the semester!
Replies
Hi Eliza, thanks for sharing! I think it's great how you learn about the cultural insight of how Turkish people view families. Retaining vocabulary at such a fast pace is always a struggle. When I took the Spanish 221 course, I had the same problem especially because we learned a whole list of vocabulary in two days and moved on to a new list. It was very overwhelming. I hope you continue with your Turkish studies! Good luck!!
You have a very good insight on how helpful these terms and phrases are in understanding the language and the culture. In my opinion, these differences between languages are one of the most interesting aspects of learning various languages from completely different cultures. I can also relate to your struggle of having difficulty retaining vocabulary. I am usually very good at learning new words and recalling them even without much practice, but this semester it has been way harder for me. I think one aspect playing into this is the different writing system which requires you to not only remember the word itself, but the different letters as well.