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…Posted on PanOpto: "To be honest, I think I've been lagging behind in terms of my goals. I am obviously learning Turkish (I can see improvement in comprehension and reading, speaking, and writing abilities) but I haven't kept up with the tasks I set
Read more…The phonetic inventory of Turkish, while in some respects similar to English, is best described as a vowel harmony. I’ve mentioned it before, but vowel harmony means vowels are either front (i, e, ö, and ü) or back (ı, a, o, and u), and rounded (ö, ü
Read more…I think what interests me most about Turkish culture is its history. As a prospective history/Global Studies: Middle East major, this makes sense, but I also just enjoy learning about it because there is so much to learn about in the Anatolian/former
Read more…One significant difference between Turkish and English is sentence structure, or syntax. In English, we structure sentences in a pretty strict Subject-Verb-Object order, whereas the Turkish structure is Subject-Object-Verb. Another interesting differ
Read more…“Figuring Foreigners Out” and Hofstede’s Dimensions identify the several spectrums that define cultures and help people compare them. They both talk about values that differentiate cultures, like individualism versus collectivism and nonverbal commu
Read more…After listening to other’s learning plans, I realized I was probably biting off more than I could chew in terms of the tasks I wanted to undertake. I think staring off with simpler tasks to acclimate myself with Turkish will probably be the best rout
Read more…I took AP and IB Psych in high school, so these readings were a good refresher for me, especially when learning about language. Although I had this background, I think it was valuable to have this reading because I learned new things about how/where
Read more…The article about the function of our brain is a really interesting topic for me. I always hear people saying cerebral localization which means that each area of the brain to respond to a single behavioral ability. However, I have never known what th
Read more…I think the most important and motivating aspect of learning a new language is realizing how many doors open up to you. English may be one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, which makes it easier on native speakers like me, but there’s
Read more…Looking back, I did not follow my Quechua learning plan as close as possible, but rather modified my lessons to include what was most culturally relevant after discussions with my language partner.
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