This artifact was a great listening exercise where we had to listen to a popular pop artist in Turkey and fill in words, related to our parts of the face vocabulary.
Sydney Freeman's Posts (31)
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This worksheet taught me how to discuss family in Turkish.
After reading the articles for this week, I do believe that bilinguals are more intelligent. For starters, it is incredibly difficult and challenging to relearn two languages. The most fascinating part of the article was when it discussed how being bilingual can change how your brain is wired and how bilinguals have more brain activity because in order to respond they have to repress one language. I also found it interesting how it could potentially prevent dementia. Overall, I enjoyed how this article had a variety of statistics and looked at different research on this topic. It definitely encouraged me to want to master another language and reiterated the value and purpose of this course.
I enjoyed watching the Culture Shock video because it brings to light the daily trials and tribulations that abroad students encounter in America and specifically on U of R's campus. As natives to America, it is easy to forget how even the smallest cultural differences like the way you greet someone or how you dress can be a major cultural challenge for a foreigner. It also reiterates the importance of being accepting, open minded, and curious about learning their culture so that you can better understand and make foreigners feel comfortable. Above all, I think it is important to remember that even if we have never studied abroad we have all been in the same boat whether we are in a new community, school, team, etc. where it has been challenging to acclimate to a new environment. We should pay attention to what made us adjust and feel welcomed and do the same for abroad students studying on our campus.
This reading opened my eyes to how languages die when the speakers of the language are very few, and when there is no written record of the language. I learned that it is more common for oral languages to die permanently, since there is no proof that it once existed. Especially when a language is only spoken by a few of people and is not seen as useful, it easy for it to get lost generation after generation. This is especially seen in children who have immigrant parents. If the language is not spoken at home, it will most likely not be part of their vocabulary and as the family line continues, the language will no longer be a part of the norm. At the end of the day, when the language dies, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to bring it back. There is a whole culture that dies along with it. People lose cultural identities, richness, and diversity of humanity's linguistic heritage. Therefore, it is crucial to maintain the language by having a group of people who speak the language generation after generation to ensure that the language does not die out.
The biggest challenges that I have had with trying to write in Turkish is not knowing the correct vowel harmony to use. I tend to confuse vowels for one another and this is problematic especially because switching a vowel could create a completely different word. I do not have as much difficulty reading in Turkish especially since the Turkish alphabet is similar to English (latin). And while I do not think it is hard to sound out the words, I overall struggle with pronouncing words in other languages so I think that with practice that is a weakness that I can definitely improve on.
For the last week of class we reviewed what we learned this semester. So we practiced greetings, how to talk about the weather, reviewed numbers, and how to have a basic conversation in Turkish. I was so surprised by how much we learned in such a short period of time. Even though I have seen progress in learning the language, some key weaknesses that I realize that I need to work on moving forward to the future are pronunciations, vowel harmony, and developing sentences. Some strengths that I found were vocabulary, listening, and having basic dialogues in Turkish. Overall, this week was great preparation for our final evaluations next week where I can truly test how far I've come this semester.
Cultural Project Women's Rights
For my cultural project I focused on women's rights in Turkey. I am very inspired by how Turkey has come along way in their fight for gender equality and given the current cultural climate surrounding the topic I am intrigued to see how Turkey has served as a leader or in a way a rebel in the Middle East for breaking the status quo and granting women their legal rights.
While Turkey has come along way, I also realize that just like in the States there is an ongoing battle for equal pay, access to education, as well as treatment of women. The number of women in parliament is at an all-time high of about 17 percent, and Turkey has made considerable progress in education, almost achieving gender parity in education of children. There are more girls in school today than ever before, and there are also more females attending Turkish universities. Yet when it comes to protecting Turkish women against violence, ensuring their rights of education and employment, and even their right to choose their own spouse, women face layers of discrimination. This goes to show how there is still so much work left to be done in their fight for equality.
This project relates to learning the Turkish language, because if I am going to learn the language I should learn everything about the culture and as a woman I should have an understanding of the legal rights afforded to them. Knowing the language is powerful because I have the opportunity to communicate with other Turkish women about their rights, to join forces and serve as an activist, or even spread the word among my peers in America about what is going on in Turkey to spread awareness and hopefully spark change.
Before taking this course, I thought that learning Turkish was going to be a daunting challenge but to my surprise I have enjoyed learning the language as well as its rich culture. The more I learn the language the more I am interested in learning anything and everything about Turkey. Over these past few months, I have learned a wide array of vocabulary from how to tell time, how to count, how to refer to family members, tell the weather, and even how to say different countries in Turkish. I have surely come along way from just learning about how to say simple greetings like hello and goodbye. I have also developed an understanding of grammar and the vowel harmony rules. Above all, I do believe that I have reached my goals and even gone beyond. In the beginning of this course my main goal was to gain a basic foundation where I will know the alphabet, simple greetings, and how to ask for things like food, transportation, and goods. Also how to ask for directions, understand directions and be able to find my way around Turkey. I have learned about how to say those things and much more like Turkey’s rich culture. From belly dancing, to women’s rights and the history of Turkey’s secular government it has been fascinating to learn about the many unique and cherished aspects of Turkey’s culture.
The most challenging aspect of this course was just being open minded and allowing myself to be vulnerable to learning something foreign and very different from English and spanish. It was difficult to grasp how to say things properly, also just memorizing vocabulary and other terms like numbers were challenging especially since it was a lot of material being covered in such a short period of time. Above all, I believe that learning the grammar was the most challenging aspect of learning the language and I think that I am just now finally understanding the vowel harmony concepts.
Looking into the future, I hope to continue to build on my knowledge of the Turkish language. I hope to learn how to say terms in economics and government in Turkey. I also have small goals like learning how to count up to 1,000 in Turkish. I also hope to improve my communicative competence by developing my ability to listen to and interpret spoken Turkish, as well as working on improving my pronunciation and the fluency of my spoken Turkish. In order to achieve these goals I will continue to practice having conversations in Turkish, expanding my vocabulary, understanding grammatical rules, listening to Turkish dialogues, and even watching the popular soap opera my professor introduced me to.
Overall this course was incredibly enlightening, helpful and enjoyable and it showed me that learning new languages can be fun and exciting!
This week we had our cultural project presentations which I found to be incredibly enlightening and thought-provoking. I learned a lot about women's rights in Turkey but also in South Korea. I also learned important vocabulary terms like how to say women in Turkey "Kadınlar", equality "Eşitlik", gender "Cinsiyet", and power "Güç". I was very impressed with how both cultures are very progressive in women's rights and there are opportunities for women to become highly educated and serve as leaders in the workforce. But also, I was very surprised to learn statistics about domestic violence in Turkey, the gender wage gap in South Korea, and educational disparities among men and women as the result of economic status. These presentations opened my eyes to the current gender debate going on outside of America and motivated me to learn more vocabulary related to this topic so that I could have conversations in Turkish about this important issue.
Last week we learned about how to talk about the family in Turkish. I found two things interesting about this lesson. For one, how you say grandparents in Turkish differs based on whether they are you maternal grandparents or your paternal grandparents. Maternal grandmothers are called "anneanne" and granddad's are called "dede" while paternal grandmothers are called "babaanne". Another interesting part of the family vocabulary is that there is only one word for half sibling and step sibling. Additionally, there are different ways to refer to younger and older family members. For instance, for younger brothers you say "erkek kardes" and you call your older brother "ag-abey abi". Above all, I found it very surprising that the way you refer to a wife is a major sign of respect in Turkey. It is respectful for a man to call his wife, "karim" which is my wife, but it is incredibly rude to refer to a wife as "Kari".
Overall, the nuances in the family vocabulary directly reflect how Turkish culture, respect for women, paternal and maternal relatives, and siblings impact the way you refer to family members in this language.
For our last class we reviewed parts of the face. I learned how to say eyes "guz" in Turkish as well as "dudak" for lips, "agiz" for mouth, "burun" for nose, "kulak" for ears, "yanak" for cheeks, and "kas" for eyebrows. And then we applied this vocabulary in a fun and interactive way by watching a music video by a famous Turkish pop star who reviewed some of these terms in his catchy song. We were then given a worksheet of his lyrics and had to fill in the missing vocabulary words by listening to his song. This was a great way to learn new vocabulary and also practice listening in Turkish to improve my comprehension of the language. I look forward to learning about the family next week, and I think it would also be great to learn vocabulary about the parts of the body to build on this lesson.
For our last class we reviewed parts of the face. I learned how to say eyes "guz" in Turkish as well as "dudak" for lips, "agiz" for mouth, "burun" for nose, "kulak" for ears, "yanak" for cheeks, and "kas" for eyebrows. And then we applied this vocabulary in a fun and interactive way by watching a music video by a famous Turkish pop star who reviewed some of these terms in his catchy song. We were then given a worksheet of his lyrics and had to fill in the missing vocabulary words by listening to his song. This was a great way to learn new vocabulary and also practice listening in Turkish to improve my comprehension of the language. I look forward to learning about the family next week, and I think it would also be great to learn vocabulary about the parts of the body to build on this lesson.
Week 9
Last week, I learned about how to tell time which I found to be challenging but also incredibly helpful for this weeks lesson on numbers and dates. We learned about the calendar in Turkey and how to say the different months: ocak, subat, mart, nisan, mayis, haziran, temmuz, agustos, eylul, ekim, kasim, and aralik. We also learned how to say the days of the week: paar, pazartesi, sali, carsamba, persembe, cuma, cumartesi. Then we learned about the different seasons where winter is: kis, spring is: bahar, summer is yaz, and fall is sonbahar. After learning the vocabulary, we applied this new knowledge to telling the weather where we looked at the forecast of the week at Turkey and we had to say the month, day of the week, season, and whether it was sunny, rainy, or cloudy. I found this exercise to be very useful for understanding numbers and dates and I am excited to see how we continue to build on this new knowledge.
This week we learned about telling time which is such an important part of learning a new language. At first, I found it difficult to grasp because the words are very different from English, but once I caught on to the pattern it was a lot easier to understand. As I memorized the vocabulary and continued to practice with my peers, telling time became fun. In order to ask "What time is it?" we have to say, "Saat kaç?"And in order to respond saying, "It is 11" you say "Saat on bir". I also found it easier to learn this concept since I knew the number system in Turkish. It was also very helpful to play an interactive game to fully grasp telling time and apply what we learned in a fun and exciting way. I look forward to building on this knowledge by learning about the days of the week next class.
I think that the Turkish course is going well so far and I am on track for my learning plan. I am able to have basic conversations with the rest of the class and I am also able to understand simple dialogues. Apart from learning basic greetings and a foundation in the alphabet, numbers, and basic words we are also learning how to ask for directions which is one of my learning goals. And while we have learned about the culture of Turkey, we still have not touched on how the government as much especially how to say government terms in Turkish which I hope to learn by the end of the semester. I look forward to learning about the different seasons and how to tell the weather in Turkish. Also, I am curious about family structures and values in Turkey. I will continue to work on what I've learned by practicing pronunciations, reviewing vocabulary and having conversations outside the classroom in Turkish.
Week 6
This week we reviewed the material that we have learned so far in the semester and expanded by studying the Turkish number system and grammar rules. The number system was difficult to learn at first, but once I memorized the numbers 1-10 the numbers beyond were quite intuitive and I caught on to the pattern. On the other hand, I found that learning the grammar rules to be much more challenging and am still confused about vowel harmony. We also learned how to talk about distance such as near "bu", further "su", and furthest "o". I hope to gain a better foundation in grammar rules and my goal is to feel more comfortable forming sentences when I come back from break.
As seen in the artifact attached to this post, I had a conversation in Turkish where I introduced myself saying (mehaba) and then I proceeded to ask my partner her name "adin ne," how she was "nasilsin", where she was from "nerelisin", and good bye "gule gule". Overall, I thought that the dialogue went well considering that we had just learned how to say these introductions and were relying solely on memory. I hope to improve my pronunciations which I believe is possible with further practice.
I am happy with my progress so far in weeks 4 & 5. I have learned introductions, greetings, nationalities, and the number system. It has been helpful to have these in class dialogues with partners, group exercises, and games to learn this new material and I hope to incorporate more listening exercises as well as learn the grammatical rules.
Week 4 & 5
For weeks 4 and 5, my goals are to learn how to count and also continue building on my basic vocabulary. So far, we have learned greetings, farewells, and since I was sick last week it was interesting to learn how to say I am sick "hastayim" and get better "gecmisolsun" in Turkish. We also learned more formality like how to say Ms. and Mr (hanim, bey). In order to fully grasp what I am learning and practice vocabulary I plan to have conversations with friends outside of the classroom and also start watching youtube clips in Turkish with subtitles. I also hope that as the weeks continue I am able to learn more about the culture of Turkey especially since we learned how to say holidays like valentines day "sevgiliter gunu", and happy birthday "dogum gunun". We also learned how to say professor and student and learned about classroom objects like desks, chairs, and the chalkboard. I know that with practice repetition, and continuing to immerse myself in the Turkish language and culture I will be on the way to reaching my goal of having a basic foundation in Turkish.
Week 3
As we are well into our third week of learning the Turkish language, I am confident of my mastery of the Turkish alphabet. I found the alphabet to be very similar to English with a few exceptions. Also, learning how to pronounce the letters is extremely helpful with properly pronouncing different words. I believe that the most challenging part about learning Turkish at the moment is speaking. The words sound very different from English and Spanish so I find myself always second guessing how to say certain words. We also have expanded our vocabulary for greetings, so instead of just knowing how to say "mehaba" I learned how to say good morning "gunaydin," good evening "iyi aksamlar,"good days "iyi gunler" and good night "iyi geceler". Also simple fun phrases like We are Spiders "We orumcegiz" are interesting to learn and I am able to use it with my friends at school. I am looking forward to expanding my vocabulary but also learning grammatical rules so that I can start form sentences in Turkish.
