Although this semester did not turn out the way I expected it to be, I still learned a lot outside of language itself. I do plan to pursue learning Turkish in the future, as I am still a little disappointed in myself for stopping. However, I do have the resources on the Ning and did work with some of the resources that were advised to me. I can continue learning Turkish through the books that Merve suggested, online resources, and continuing my journey through possibly finding a language partner once I reach that step. My greatest challenge has definitely been trying to create these posts in reference to my target language, which I am not currently enrolled in. Also, I had a hard time in trying to make posts not circulated around language, but deviated towards the country/culture commonly associated with it. 

The Learning Styles survey we took in our first week of classes gave me greater insight on my learning style, which was something I would have never tried to make an effort to figure out. I can better establish goals in my future language learning settings and draw from my learning plan that I originally devised. I now have a better sense in how to gain greater knowledge in terms of language, with techniques that may be something I find more comfortable. However, I enjoyed the learning activities and our writing assignments as a means for us to reflect on our own languages. In looking up the history of Turkish and reading about Ottoman Turkish, I gained insight on the roots of the languages along with the influences throughout history on the language. Even looking up the language families of my target language gave me a better understanding of what I was to expect and what I was working with. I think people often do not think about the branches or families of languages that they are learning, even though it may benefit them in knowing. 

I particularly enjoyed our earlier readings in regards to Hofstede Dimensions of Culture, since interpretations of culture often plays a big part in language and understanding. By looking up Turkey, in reference to these dimensions of culture, I was able to draw many similarities and differences in our cultures. I did learn that I am awful at figuring out IPA phonetic spelling and that it is something I should never seriously pursue, but I did have fun trying to guess the spellings for certain words. I also enjoyed talking about dying languages and took this as an opportunity to read and explore the dying languages in the regions of the world I am interested in. Even though most of the people that do end up taking SDLC may not be learning a language that is going extinct, it is important for people to be aware of the factors that contributed to such a decline. Also, looking up the other languages that are often the second language of the country associated with your language will give you a greater insight on how these languages became more and more outdated. 

The teaching presentations was one of the highlights of the semester, even though I don't really know Turkish past the alphabet and twenty words. It gave me a better idea of how we process and present language, especially one that may be very unfamiliar to us. In figuring out how to properly present simple words, phrases, and ideas to people who may not otherwise have any exposure to the language. I do believe that you never really know something until you teach it, which may be easier if you have lower knowledge in the subject. Even though I was pulling out words and phrases that I completely was unfamiliar with, I had a good time in explaining the patterns and how to say certain words. 

I have studied Russian with people who were not aware of Russian-speaking countries besides Russia and Ukraine. Often, we learn a language without having much insight on the cultural roots besides the general stereotypes that are persistent in our language books. This class has overall served as a means of intercultural communication and cultural self-awareness that has definitely benefited many of us. I would have never learned so much about Turkish culture and the roots of the language itself. I do think it should be a greater requirement for people learning any language at all, to be given the task to do even simple background research on the history and cultural aspects of their target language. 

If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Turkish language and culture, I would start with the analysis of remaining influences of Arabic and Persian vocabulary on Modern Turkish I am curious to analyze how much of Turkish culture is actually Turkish, since there had to have been many empirical influences from the Ottoman Empire and other outside influences such as language development. My reasoning for this research is that Ottoman Turkish vocabulary included many Arabic and Persian words along with traces of grammatical influence. Since Modern Turkish is still being "developed" and still growing in vocabulary and concepts, studying the linguistic growth of Modern Turkish would be extremely interesting to analyze. English is becoming a growing influence on Turkish language, which might also make cultural influences on Turkish culture. I would like to analyze the remaining Arabic and Persian influences on Modern Turkish and how these linguistic influences have affected the development of Turkish cultural practices. The main tasks of the language reform in 1932 was to replace the Arabic and Persian loanwords with newly derived words from Turkic roots or with Old Turkish words, that have not been used in centuries. 

Although I have zero knowledge of Arabic and Persian, I think it would be very interesting to analyze their morphemes and how their morphology might have contributed and adapted into Ottoman Turkish, even possibly Modern Turkish. Also I would like to analyze how the Turkish Language Association (TDK) decided on the "Turkish equivalents" for replacements of Arabic and Persian loanwords. Being able to identify words of Arabic/Persian origin that still are being used today would be very interesting to analyze, along with the newly derived TDK words words that are being used alongside with them.

In my experience, writing Turkish has not been too difficult since Modern Turkish uses the Latin alphabet. There are only a few letters that are different, but none of them are completely different from anything I already know. Letters such as Ç, Ş, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ü, are simply modified from Latin letters that are already familiar to me. In terms of typing, I do not have much of an issue typing it on my phone since it is not very different from an English keyboard, but I have a much more difficult time on my computer since I do not know where placements of Ç, Ş, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ü are. 

From I understand about Turkish language, Turkish language is flexible in terms of word order, but sentences are most commonly written in subject-object-verb order. One of the most interesting parts about Turkish is the agglutination (gluing together) in their language. These suffixes / word endings add to a word's original meaning or it's grammatical function. We do have these things in English, but in a simpler sense. For example we have -ment as a suffix, where we can modify words such as argue, embarrass, establish, etc. 

The most common example I have found online is:

ev -  house

and once you add on "de" - which you end up with "evde", which means in the house. 

once you add "ki" which is that, - "evdeki", we specify that we talking about "in that house"

I think I also appreciate that Turkish language expresses meaning in less words, even if the words might be much longer. 

English uses more smaller words to give meaning, but using multiple suffixes in Turkish can be used to express the same meaning. 

An example I found is:

English – “You are coming from the store.” - 6 words 

Turkish – “Dükkandan geliyorsun.” - 2 words

Also, Turkish has a different subordinate clause order where the most important part of the sentence at the end of the sentence, which is different from English. 

In English, we say, "I went to the library after dinner", but in Turkish, their order would be translated into "After dinner, I went to the library" - Yemek yedikten sonra, kütüphaneye çıktım. In Turkish, the final verb also determines the tense, mood, and point of view. 

The example I just used - Yemek yedikten sonra, kütüphaneye çıktım - after dinner, I went to the library

If I want to say, "after dinner, he went to the library", I would add "he" and change the final verb from çıktım to çıktı (which changes the grammar of the verb, out). The sentence does not change besides the ending verb and the subject, which may also change the tense of the sentence too.

O, yemek yedikten sonra kütüphaneye çıktı - after dinner, he went to the library

Onlar, yemek yedikten sonra kütüphaneye çıkacaklar - after dinner, they will go to the library

Languages go extinct as they gradually become less and less commonly spoken and even less so documented. Languages like Chulym is also not a written language, which makes it even more difficult in conservation efforts. For Chulym, there are only about thirty-something fluent speakers of Chulym left. Efforts being made involve audio recordings, dictionary building, nuances. With linguists and other people who are interested in the language itself, there can be efforts made in conservation. In trying to preserve a language that is only spoken by a handful of people, I believe initiatives are very difficult, especially since it is hard to gain the trust of the community and breaking through to them. K. David Harrison mentioned in his interview that it has been easier for him to go into communities in Siberia regarding these efforts, but he faces more difficulty in North America in terms of going into communities to perform the same tasks.

As an outsider, linguists can serve as people who can better analyze the structures and cadences of language, but there will be many nuances that only native-speakers will ever be able to analyze. Even as someone who is a native-speaker of English, there will be many things I will never be able to explain, but having an outsider as another point of reference is extremely useful in language conservation efforts. I believe that a language can be conserved, but to be able to bring it back into use/life is an extremely difficult task. Even in modern times, I think it is difficult to reuse a language that may have died within a community. There may be language courses offered or speaking clubs, but be able to reintroduce a dying language back into use is a task that is still something that I think society struggles with. If the language still remains in elders, it may not necessarily be something that will be an easy task for other members of the community to utilize, if there is not someone already speaking it in the family.

For linguistics researching and performing this work, I think it is an extremely valuable and important task to conserve, but to figure out how to reintroduce the language back into use, will be something we all still have to figure out. 

I currently am not in SDLC 110, but I have thought about my learning plan and have made some changes to it. The overall change I have made to my learning plan is just to be more detailed. I think my goals have remained the same. I still plan to follow all 10 of the steps I had in my learning plan, but I now have more things to think about and have specific resources I want to use. Instead of vaguely saying "Youtube videos" I have identified a few channels/online resources for Turkish language such as nur77akaltun (Youtube Channel), Learn Turkish Online, Turkish Basics, Turkish Language Class, and İngilizce Türkçe Hikayeler. With our class discussions and the videos we watched in class from TEDtalks, have given me ideas to expand my learning even further. For example, the video from Benny Lewis and readings about linguistic families encouraged me to look up Turkish-English cognates, since that will provide me hundreds of words that are already in my own vocabulary. Some words such as cigarette - sigara, ironic - ironik, million - milyon, music - müzik, surprise - sürpriz, vision - vizyon, to name a few. These just a handful of the many other words that exist in the language that overlap with ours. In finding familiar words like these, I am already much better off, even though I may not be needing these words for many situations, having them in my vocabulary is already benefiting me. 

I think relationships between language and culture is very important to understand. There often are many norms in language that non-native speakers may not understand/recognize until we are put in certain situations. In improving my communicative competence, I hope to grow a better understanding of the norms and meanings in words/sayings/grammar in Turkish, in order for me to better grasp the language and also communicate effectively with other individuals. My Learning Plan incorporates grammatical competence in a sense where I hope to learn all pronouns and all the cases in Turkish, since language is not language without grammar, rather it would just be words. My Learning Plan does not involve discourse competence yet, since I do not think I will have ability for me to construct more than 3 sentences at a time. I have not reached the level of competence or proficiency in Turkish for me to be able to think more than using a handful of sayings in the right grammatical form. Sociolinguistic competence is something I hope to learn more about through interactions with the culture and native speakers since I will be better able to understand things such as power distance in language/behavior/culture. 

Reflect on your language learning so far. How would you describe the relationship between language and culture? What do you need to do to improve your communicative competence? Based on the readings by H.D. Brown, what kinds of competence are emphasized in your learning plan?

Turkish is in the Altay branch of the Ural-Altaic linguistic family, which is in the same linguistic family as languages as Finnish and Hungarian. Other languages in the Altay branch include Tatar, Kazakh, and Dolgan. Turkish can be further classified to the South-West/Oghuz group. Other members of the Oghuz group include Azerbaijani (Western), Gaguaz (Western), and Turkmen (Eastern).

Turkish used to be written in the Perso-Arabic alphabet until the language was replaced with Latin alphabet, as a part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's reforms in the 1920s. There were a lot of Arabic and Persian vocabulary in the language, with traces of grammatical influences. Arabic, French, and Persian provided many loanwords to Ottoman Turkish, before the words were officially related with Turkish counterparts. For example: the word for south in Arabic is جنوب cenûb, which was adopted into cenup in Ottoman Turkish, but now is güney. Another word is cloth, which is البسه elbise* in Arabic, which was adopted into elbise in Ottoman Turkish, but is now giysi, in modern-day Turkish. Many loanwords in French still are used in modern-day Turkish. The word for solution is also solution in French, which was adapted into solüsyon, but now çözelti. Status in English, is statut in French, which was adapted to statü, but now durum. 

During the reform, these Arabic / Persian loanwords were replaced with new derivations of Turkic roots, which created a generational divide between the youth and elderly at the time of its' implementation. In recent years, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) are still coming up with new words and concepts, mostly derived from the English language, which is really interesting to me that there is still an active association establishing these things. Knowing that Turkish has gone through these changes, it gives me an insight on the roots of the language and culture, which was influenced by so many different languages/cultures from different regions. 

Languages evolve over time and adapt based on the changes of the surrounding world. As shown in Turkish, there are cultural and outer influences from other places/languages, but there are also internal changes where the TDK and the Atatürk reforms initiate some form of change. 

“Modern Turkish” is meant to be phonetic, so spelling is easily guessed from pronunciation and vice versa. Turkish has 28 phonemes and is based on a vowel harmony, which means that vowels will mostly be in the front or back and rounded or unrounded. Velar consonants are (k,g)  palletized to c and j, which is similar to Russian, which is really interesting. There are also no diphthongs in the standard Turkish dialect, which are sounds formed by two vowels in a syllable (Wikipedia gives the example of coin, side). The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters and does not use Q, W, and X, but uses Ç. It is also common However, the alphabet is very similar.

To me, the most interesting thing is that in Turkish, every letter is pronounced, unlike English (and uncommon for many other languages too).

For example: ekmek is pronounced “ecˈmec” and hafta is “hafta”. Turkish does have a letter Ğ, which is a soft G, which has no sound on it’s own. Ağaç is pronounced “ɑ.ɑtʃ”, öğrenci is phonetically “øʝɾendʒi”, without the g, rather it modifies the preceding vowel.

Since the language is phonetic, my main challenge will be able to listen for certain letters and correctly memorize the sounds of each letter in order to do so. I still struggle with mixing up i and ı. I can only become better at listening and writing once I actually have a good hang at the alphabet. Once I am able to do so, I will want to listen to audio pronunciations to able grasp words and certain pronunciations. The IPA phonetic spelling is hard for me to follow, so being able to rely on an online dictionary audio recording will help me understand how to pronounce words much better. I still do this for Chinese and Russian often, so I know I will do this for Turkish too.

I always found the concept of individualist and collectivist culture very interesting. The categories behind the Geert Hofstede Analysis is classified into collectivism vs individualism, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation. As a Chinese-American, I have grown up in a somewhat individualist society with strong roots of collectivist culture within my family and culture. Hofstede’s analysis really hits home for me as I live within a stark range of contradictions. The means and categories of analysis is a good way to try to figure out different cultures. The most interesting category to me is collectivism vs individualism and uncertainty avoidance.

A collectivist society views “I” as “we” and societies/groups are integrated into strong ingroups. Everything is in the interest of the group. If a child is to voice the opinion deviating from what is collectively felt between the rest of the group, the child is usually shunned and seen to be bad character. This sums up most of my life with my family, especially since I am the one who deviates from the rest. There is also a large idea In Chinese culture, we are to value our family and put them above everyone else. Chinese families value their family to a greater extent compared to American households. The phenomena is based on the idea that you are born into this “group” and you are expected to be loyal to this group for life.

The minority of the world lives in an individualist society/group, where the interests of an individual is above others. The idea where everyone is expected to have their own ideas and develop their own personalities/ideas (and have support to deviate from the norm) is a foreign concept to me. Individualism also ties into uncertainty avoidance. Many Americans enjoy uncertainty as also shown through family interactions. Whether a child is going to university or just moving out of their parent’s house, many people are willing to move across the country with not much thought. I know many people who just packed up their lives and moved from New York to California without a second thought. Chinese culture is much different, where each step is carefully thought out and often coordinated between your families.

As I really know nothing about Turkish culture, I did a search on Cultural Altas, which is an Australian project with the goal to provide cultural profiles where most have some connections to the Hofstede Dimensions. As society tends to be more collectivist, the younger generations are more individualist, which is also common in China and Russia. Turkish culture is very family-centric and different generations of a nuclear often live together even through marriage. There are similarities to be found in Turkish culture when compared to Chinese culture. There is a strong value in elders, meanwhile in U.S culture, the elderly will prefer to live by themselves or in care facilities in efforts to alleviate the burden on their families. Using the Hofstede Dimensions of Culture and being able to compare it to your own culture is often the best way to figure out the values of another.

My Learning Plan (Google Slides)

Rough Draft / Original Word Document of Learning Plan

I personally do not believe language is purely a biological phenomenon, but there is a definitely biological phenomenon associated with it. Studies show that damage to specific areas of the cortex correlates with the loss of certain kinds of linguistic ability. Damage to the Wernicke's area, which may result in a reduced ability to comprehend speech, while damage to the Broca's area results in a reduced ability to speak. Basic speech is generally generated in the Wernicke’s area and is then transferred to the Broca’s area for encoding. Our speech production relies on different parts of our brains, even though not every brain is alike, we have extremely similar processes and motors in regard to producing and interpreting language.

I try to best conceptualize or process meaning with context, which is often not provided. In trying to understand a word or phrase on its’ own is a difficult task, especially if it is in a foreign language. In Chapter 30, there is a paragraph about collocations and it discusses how they differ greatly between languages, which makes mastering foreign languages even more difficult. The example given is: in English, we “face” problems, but in Hebrew, we “stand in front of problems”. As a native speaker of Mandarin and someone studying two other foreign languages (Russian and Turkish), I recognize that I generally have the tendency to compare one language to another. With semantic relationships such as lexemes and collocations, comparing two languages generally will not benefit you, especially since they likely will not share the same meaning in certain words. I think this paragraph about gave me a deeper insight to try to think about a language on its’ own rather than trying to compare it to one I am more familiar with. English, Mandarin, and Russian are extremely different from each other and I do not doubt that Turkish would be the same. Although I am not at that level of Turkish to currently think even past the alphabet and certain greetings, I will be much more aware of trying to think of the language as independent, rather than trying to translate it word-for-word into English. In understanding nuances and words, trying to find specific examples of usage would be the most useful for me. There have been many times I translated a word and ended up using it incorrectly in the context with what I was trying to say. I am not really afraid to make mistakes in language, especially since I think that is the best way for one to learn. However, I can learn more by trying to make efforts to find context for a word I want to use in sentence or phrase. Comparing languages can be useful, but sometimes it may not benefit you and have you making more mistakes in comparison to the original thought you had in mind.

I never really had experience learning a foreign language until last year, which was when I decided to learn Russian. For my language requirements in middle school and high school, I chose Mandarin even though it was my Native language. Starting Russian was a journey for me, especially since I had no experience learning a foreign language. There were so many different aspects to it, such as the Cyrillic alphabet and using language-learning terms that I do not really know. I enjoy learning language because there are many words in other languages that cannot be translated back into English and it often gives you a sense of the culture/values within the language. For me, the hardest part about learning a new language is speaking. I personally believe that having the ability to read and write is great, but speaking and being able to hold a conversation is the most valuable part of language learning. I struggle with it, but I work to fight this fear since I realize I will never improve if I do not make efforts to speak.

The Learning Styles survey said that I was an Auditory Learner and I agree with this outcome because I realized that I was learning language best when I was studying abroad. I did not spend as much time on written assignments, but being able to use the language on a day-to-day basis gave me a better grasp of the language than just doing homework. I also usually find myself reading test questions and reading things out loud. According to the Multiple Intelligences Survey, I scored 4.29 on both Self and Social (interpersonal). A high score on Self suggests that I take in information from another individual and will discuss the matter on another occasion. I do agree with the part that I prefer to do things on a basis of trial and error and giving myself time to absorb new information. The Social score implies that I like to read/write dialogues and develop my ideas from other people. I do agree with that since I find it more helpful for me to write dialogues for foreign language, since it gives me freedom and creativity to work with the knowledge I have. My last Multiple Intelligence was Language (Linguistic). I like to repeat new words and use them from the point I obtain them in my vocabulary. I keep a journal in Russian and try to work myself to discuss topics I may find difficult to do. I like to analyze long pieces of work for my own knowledge.

Looking at the FIRE model is a little more difficult for me to figure out where I fall in the language learning stage, just because I find different activities and styles of learning more beneficial at different levels of language learning. I prefer less lectures/rigid instruction when I am in an upper-level setting, but I prefer it when I am starting from zero. In some points, I prefer bigger classes because I can learn from other individuals through their strengths and their mistakes, but sometimes it may be too big and the class may feel like it is lagging. In other cases, I prefer small classes because it makes it easier for us to learn as a group. I personally think speaking and having opportunities to write give me the freedom to learn language best. However, this is hard to do at a beginner level of language.

At this point in time with my Turkish studies, I believe that the most important activities to maximize my self-learning experiences are to rewrite words as much as I can and to listen to the pronunciation of every word. I am not at the stage where I can make dialogues or really absorb as many new words as I can from other people, so I would need to work on my language learning through less creative ways such as flashcards and copying words. During the course of this semester, I am looking forward to learning Turkish and definitely coming across many obstacles along the way, but does a person really learn if they did not struggle?