One of my favorite areas to learn about is Korean history. I had previously learned about Korean history with Korean language partner Joora. Therefore, I was able to go more in depth with Jimin. Jimin prepared a timeline beginning from the times of d
Read more…I watched a very popular movie called “Along with the Gods 2” (“신과함께 2”). I practiced watching a movie without English subtitles. It was a bit difficult because there were some cultural jokes and references that I did not understand. However, Jimin w
Read more…I learned about another type of proverbs. These proverbs are four worded proverbs and are written with Chinese characters called “한자”. One character stands for a word or phrase. For example “춘하추동” means spring, summer, fall, and winter. “춘” stands fo
Read more…I learned about Korean proverbs! I was interested in learning proverbs because one of my favorite television show has a mini game where one person will read the first half of the proverb and his partner has to complete it. Jimin showed us a clip of t
Read more…Biweekly Journal #1
During the first 2 weeks, I established goals with my new Korean language partner, Jimin. My goal was not only to become more fluent in Korean, but also to learn more about culture and practical everyday ways of speaking and behav
Read more…In the Korean culture, respect for elders is a necessity in the culture. This respect is displayed in various ways, including bowing (인사) when greeting elders, using a different form of language that shows respect (commonly adding “-요, -합니다, -세요” to
Read more…At the beginning of the year Hocam Merve gave us all little evil eye "talismans" (if you want to call them that. They're little glass evil eyes on safety pins). They are supposed to be to keep evil out of your life so I put mine on my backpack to giv
Read more…To connect with my archaeological interests, I used the tag #arkeolojik (archaeologic) on CNN Turk and tried to read the news reports on anything related to archaeology. To my surprise I was able to understand a lot more than I expected going into it
Read more…So, my dad and his friend Faruk are really big into soccer (GO ATLANTA UNITED!!!!!), so they encouraged me to interact with Turkish culture via soccer. Because of this, kept up with their favorite team,Fenerbahçe, and I listened to the announcers to
Read more…Throughout the semester, I've kept a close eye on Turkish politics, especially since I am also in International Relations of the Middle East and Turkey plays a part in those relations. Although I read the news in English, I think it was helpful for m
Read more…Hocam Merve created a playlist so we could listen to both traditional Turkish music and some funny music (Istanbul - They might be giants). I tried to understand the lyrics but I am not that advanced and they all speak too fast for me,
Read more…I do not have a photo of this, but on the last day of class, Hocam Merve made our class Turkish coffee and brought Turkish delights. What was especially cool was that she was able to read my fortune and future from the grounds. Of course I couldn't r
Read more…I watched the movie Mustang, per Veli's request. It was hard to follow along, so I had to use subtitles, but I was proud of myself when I was able to pick out words I definitely wouldn't have known before. PHOTO-2018-10-27-16-57-49.jpg
Read more…Since early October, I have been speaking with a pen pal, Veli, from Turkey. He helps me with my Turkish and I help him with English. Here, we are talking about Thanksgiving, which he did not know much about.IMG_5209.PNG
Read more…I decided to combine the 7 bi-weekly progress journals into one so my improvement is mappable and in one location. Although I’ve talked a lot about my progress in the regular journals, there are some weeks where I don’t mention my learning. I may not
Read more…I think it’s really interesting albeit unfortunate that every two weeks, a language dies. I also thought it was interesting how 80% of the world speaks the 84 most prominent languages. This puts those in the 20% who don’t speak the major languages at
Read more…A lot of my writing in Turkish is done free hand through notes and assignments in class, and I think that helps me learn the language better, because it kind ingrains spelling and such in my head. I also think writing Turkish has definitely helped me
Read more…Modern Turkish is, not surprisingly, part of the Turkic language family tree, derived from Proto-Turkic, which is actually part of the Altaic family! That surprised me a lot because I never would’ve guessed Korean and Japanese came from the same fami
Read more…
