We didn’t have classes for the first two weeks this semester, so I’m not sure what to write about. Here are some basic words and sentences we learned in the first class.

Welcome - Hoş geldin

Hello - Merhaba, Selam, İyi günler

How are you? I'm fine, thanks. And you? - Nasılsınız? İyiyim teşekkür ederim, siz nasılsınız

Long time no see - Ne zamandır/kaç zamandır görüşmedik

What's your name? My name is ... - İsminiz nedir? İsmim ...

Where are you from? I'm from ... - Nerelisin? ...lıyım

Pleased to meet you - Tanıştıǧımıza memnun oldum/Memnun oldum

Good morning - Günaydın

Good afternoon - Tünaydın, İyi günler

Good evening - İyi akşamlar

Good night - İyi geceler

Goodbye - Hoşçakal/Güle, güle

Good luck - İyi şanslar!

Cheers/Good health! - Şerefe!

Have a nice day - İyi günler!

Bon appetit - Afiyet olsun!

Bon voyage - İyi yolculuklar! Güle, güle!

I understand - Anlıyorum

I don't understand – Anlamıyorum/Anlamadım

Please speak more slowly - Lütfen daha yavaş konuşun

Please write it down - Lütfen yazınız

Do you speak English? - İngilizce biliyor musun?

Do you speakTurkish? Yes, a little - Türkçe biliyor musun? Çok az Türkçe biliyorum

We only met once for these two weeks and we discussed the potential topics for my cultural presentation. In the end, I decided to talk about Turkish drinks in my presentation but I found Turkish breakfast and tourist spots are also very interesting topics that I want to share in my last journal.

Turks very value their breakfast and usually need to spend some time preparing breakfast. A typical Turkish breakfast consists of cheese (Beyaz peynir, kaşar, etc.), butter, olives, eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, jam, honey, kaymak sucuk (Turkish sausages, can be eaten with eggs), pastırma, börek, simit, poğaça, and soup. So it is always very nutritious.

Turkish breakfast has a special dish called menemen, which is made of tomatoes, green peppers, onions, olive oil, and eggs. Turkish tea is always served with breakfast. Turkish breakfast can be translated to “kahvaltı”, means “before coffee” ("Kahve"="coffee"; "altı"="before").

Turkey's daily staple food is rice, vegetables, bread, and barbecue.

In western Turkey, olive oil is very productive. In Turkey, olive oil is used for cooking. The Turkish food, mantı, is very similar to Mantou or steamed bun in China or mandu in Korea.

Tourist spots:

The first one is the blue mosque.

Located in Istanbul, it is an important landmark of Istanbul. The walls of the blue mosque are carved with beautiful patterns on a white substrate. It makes the whole mosque blue. This building is very beautiful and historical.

The second one is the Bosporus Strait.

Bosporus strait is a territory near the Black Sea, the only way out of the open sea. It is because of this strait that Turkey is divided into two parts: Asia and Europe. If you sail through the Strait by boat, you can see the very beautiful scenery.

The third one is Pamukkale.

Pamukkale is totally made by nature, though it looks very artificial. The scenery is very beautiful. It seems to give people a sense of relaxation. This place is famous for hot spring. There are not only thousands of years of natural hot springs in Pamukkale but also all kinds of strange hills like marshmallows.

The fourth one is Goreme National Park.

The Goreme National Park is an important symbol of Turkey. This place is famous for its magnificent volcanic rocks and very ancient cave churches with beautiful hot air balloons. After years of wind and sun, it will lead to extremely uneven road conditions. So people usually take hot air balloons to visit.

The fifth one is the Troy ruins.

Troy ruins is a very famous site in Turkey. There is a huge Trojan at the entrance. The Trojan is very big. This has become one of the most important cultural landscapes in Turkey.

1. Improve the understanding of the native language.

Only when we start to learn a new language, we can realize the importance of origin and foundation of our own language. Because we all grew up speaking our own native language and never thought about the structure of sentences or how each syllable is pronounced. After taking this class and studying different languages, I have a broader understanding of linguistic and began to be interested in how Chinese developed. I would like to further research the history of the development of Chinese and to know the correlation between the language, the society, and the culture.

I believe learning new languages will significantly improve your native languages and other languages’ grammar, reading, vocabulary, and oral skills. Also, I found I could pick up a new language faster and faster by studying more and more languages. It’s like after playing basketball for a lifetime, you can learn to play volleyball, and then you can use volleyball skills to improve the basketball level.

2. Improve the ability to focus

In a study published in the online journal, researchers asked people who can speak multiple languages to do text comprehension tasks and use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for observation. The results show that people who can speak multiple languages are better at filtering out contradictory words than people who can only speak one language. This ability not to focus on contradictory words is useful in preventing distraction and focusing on the task at hand. I think after learning several languages, my capability of dealing with multi-tasks increased a lot. And I can translate languages faster.

3. Faster learning

I believe language learning can be applied directly to anything we want to learn. When you learn a new language, your memory will also improve. Absorbing and retaining more information can significantly shorten your learning curve because you spend more time mastering new information rather than relearning what you have learned.

4. Learning a new culture and having more in-depth thinking

Language learning is not only to communicate in a foreign language but also to experience a new culture. Communication with more people from different countries and cultures is the core of language learning. In order to practice and improve your new language, you need to study with a native language teacher, such as my language partner or watching the movie. In this way, you can improve your ability to learn this language. It's like riding a bike. You have to go cycling yourself, not just watch the video of cycling tutorial, but watch it as part of the whole process. Also, when studying a new language, I talked much more than when I did not because I need to communicate and learn. I also need to communicate my feelings and experiences with classmates, which made me have lots of deep thinking. When we exchanged our ideas, we all improved and broadened our ways of thinking

https://urcapture.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=06e1f6c5-34b8-492d-96d4-ab24016a62ee

    For the past two weeks, we mainly reviewed all of the basic greetings, grammar, and vocabulary. Also, we talked about Turkish culture and politics a lot and we found that lots of things in Turkey are very similar to China. For example, it is very interesting to see that the relationship between the woman and her mother-in-law is a popular topic among both societies. I found this because every Turkish romantic movie I have watched before included how intense the relationship was between the female main character and her mother-in-law. It could be the male main character’s mother does not like the girl or she overprotected her son which made the girl very uncomfortable. My language partner told me that it was a very common topic in their culture, and I told her that it was a hot topic in today’s China society as well. We sometimes call those boys or men who asked for his mother’s opinions before doing anything as “妈宝男”, which can be translated to “mommy’s baby little boy”. And the tension between the women and this type of man always comes from her mother-in-law, and it is really hard to balance.

    Here are parts of the content that we reviewed for the past two weeks.

Family members:

Grandfather: Dede

Grandmother from mother’s side: Anneanne

Grandmother from father’s side: Babaanne

Uncle from father’s side: Amca

Aunt from mother’s side: Hale

Uncle from father’s side: Dayı

Uncle from mother’s side: Teyze

Greetings:

Hello! - Merhaba.

Good morning! - Günaydın.

Good afternoon! - Tünaydın.

Good day! - İyi günler.

Good evening! - İyi akşamlar.

Good night! - İyi geceler.

How are you? - Nasılsınız?

I’m doing well, thank you! How are you ? - Çok iyiyim, teşekkür ederim. Siz nasılsınız?

Self-introduction:

Hello everyone, my name is Bonnie, I’m 21 years old. It is my first time to Turkey. -

Çinden geliyorum, adım Bonnie, on yirmi bir yaşıma bastı. İlk defa türkiyeye geldim.

Colors:

White - beyaz

Black - siyah/kara

Blue - mavi

Green - yeşil

Yellow - sarı

Grey - gri/gümüşi

Red - kırmızı/kızıl

Pink - pembe

Purple - mor

Coffee - kahverengi

Orange – turuncu

Gold - altunı

Silvery - gümüsü

The main role, Sadik, is an idealist. Although his father expected him to become an agricultural engineer and manage the family farm in Aegean village, he was a political activist when he was in University and became a left-wing journalist in 70 years. He settled in Istanbul, and his father was mad at this and then broke the relationship with him. On September 12, 1980, his wife gave birth. On that day, a brutal military coup led to chaos across the country. Because he was unable to get to the hospital, his wife gave birth to their only son Deniz on the chaotic street and died after that. After the coup, Sadik went through a long period of torture, interrogation and prison time, and as a result, he was terminally ill and would soon die. Considering his young son Deniz, he had to return to the countryside, and tried to let Huseyin, his father who had not been talking to him for many years, accepted his son Deniz, which triggered a touching story among the families of the large Turkish family.

One of conversations in the movie is very touching.

"Dad, am I dreaming?"

"I don't know. Even it is a dream, it is still a sweet dream, right?"

"Why aren't you a superman?"

"Because you grew up."

"When people grow up, will their dreams became monotonous? Will I never see you again? "

"If you want to see me, you can see me. But those dreams may not be as real as they are now. Then you will know that everything is just imagination in your mind. However, your dreams in the future may be better than now. You can direct those dreams as you like. You can turn dreams into reality. "

"Growing up is like this?"

"Well, handsome. That's how growing up means. "

"I want to be a child forever."

"Why?"

"Because I can't see you when I grow up."

"You have no choice. You have to grow up."

When Deniz said goodbye, he made a promise to his father in silence that he will never cry again and one day, he will grow up and become strong. He believes although his father does not know how to fly, but his father is still a super hero. And he knew the new adventure is waiting for him.

It seems that fathers are not always good at expressing their true feelings, which leads to the misunderstanding of father’s love. I think this is because, in Asian countries, father is always the head of the family. If you want to be more tough, you should not show cowardice in front of people, especially family members. So father’s love can not be as gentle as mother’s love. Father’s love needs a deeper understanding and excavation, which makes father’s love become greater and more touching. The film explores and interprets the characteristics of father’ love, from Sadik's father inhibited when he is trying to leave home to his father was shouting and regretting after his death. Sadik's father is tough and conceited, not understood by his family, or we can even say he is so lonely. But no one can deny that he loves his son very much but in his own way. After Sadik's return, a series of changes of his father show that his father's inner feelings have been suppressed for many years. After Sadik's death, this kind of feelings finally broke out.

If I have received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Turkish and its culture, I want to study the similarity of Turkish and Japanese, because even after learning Turkish for nearly 3 months, I still think that Turkish sounds like Japanese a lot. And I ask my friends who studies Japanese and they thought so. I heard there were a lot of arguments about the reasons, but it seems that the expansion of the Turkish nationality (nomadic horsemen) from Central Asia to East Asia is a strong one. The Altai mountains ranges from the present western Siberia to Mongolia. The Turkish ethnic group has been integrated into this region since ancient times. I believe I would start the research by learning the origins of these two languages and the history of the relationship between Turkey and Japan. After finding the possible historical reasons of why they are similar, I would analyze and compare the phonetic and maybe grammar similarities between these two languages. For example, the grammatical order of Turkish and Japanese is subject + object + verb. In the cases of English and Chinese, it is subject + Verb + object, there is no need to replace the language order when translating Japanese into Turkish. Also, Turkish and Japanese are languages with frequent vowels. The syllables of Japanese are basically "consonant + vowel", and Turkish is similar (there are many cases of consonant + vowel + consonant). Therefore, compared with English, vowels should be heard more clearly. In other words, it can be said that Turkish pronunciation is easy to mark with Katakana, and Katakana pronunciation is easy to understand.

In the past two weeks, we began to learn Turkish grammar but only simple tenses. We just learnt the present tense and a little bit about past tense, and they are basically adding different suffix to the verb to show the tense, such as “d” or “yor”, which is similar to English grammar structure. But besides that, I did some exploration about simple tenses in Turkish and some of that are very different from English.

1. The present tense. Used to represent an action in the current state, an ongoing action, or an upcoming action.

For example: Ben televizyon izlemek çok istiyorum.

(I want to watch TV very much [now]. Action in the current state.)

Çocuklar şarkı söylüyor.

(The children are singing. Action in progress.)

Bu akşam babamın evine gidiyorum.

(I'm going to Dad's home tonight. The action is happening soon.)

2. Broad tense. Used to express habitual, regular actions or requests, blessings and other tone. (broad literal meaning: actions done in the past, now and in the future are still likely to be done.)

For example: Her sabah parka gider.

He goes to the park every morning. Habitual action.)

İlkbaharda çiçerler açar.

(Flowers bloom in spring. Regular action.)

Kapı açar mısınız?

(Could you please open the door? The tone of the request.)

3. Long-term tense. Represents a continuous action from the past to the present. There are overlaps with broadness, but the difference is that there is no clear explanation for whether the action will last in the future. It is mostly used for official speeches.

Çin ve Türkiye gibi gelişmekte olan ülkeler hızlı ilerlemektedir.

(Developing countries like China and Turkey are developing rapidly. The past development has continued to the present.)

4. Past tense. As the name implies, it represents the past action, and the action has ended when speaking. Like yo hice algo in Spanish or J'ai fait qqch in French

Üç gün önce sinemaya gittim.

I went to the cinema three days ago

However, unlike English, there are two other cases of Turkish past tense:

(1) past reporting. Emphasize that past actions are not personal experiences, because this tense is widely used in biography.

Dün gece şehrin doğusunda kar yağmış.

（It's said that it snowed in the east of the city yesterday.）

(2) emphasis in the past. Emphasize that the past actions are not personal experiences, but is truth.

Dün gece şehrin doğusunda kar yağmıştır.

(it snowed in the east of the city yesterday! ——I didn't see it with my own eyes, but maybe according to the snowman I saw today, I'm sure it really snowed in the east of the city yesterday.)

5. Future tense. As the name suggests, what happens in the future.

Onlar birkaç ay sonra Amerika’ya yerleşecek.

(They will immigrate to the United States in a few months.)

I read an article about some important cultural aspects I found very interesting. Here are some of them:

1. Shake hands or kiss the cheek

In Turkey, hugs are for close friends and family. If it is the first time to meet, a handshake is perfectly acceptable. Turkish people also like to kiss their cheeks, which is suitable for any occasion when people greet each other. If you know each other and if you want to kiss, men would like women to do it first.

2. Prepare to drink a lot of tea

Tea is not just a hot drink. In Turkey, it's a sign of a warm welcome in the homes of enthusiastic hosts; drink tea and make more friends. You usually have tea, fresh fruit and candy after dinner. In addition, you might find someone is bargaining in the Turkish market while drinking teas together.

3. Don't worry if you are late

If you're late for a social event, people won't think you're rude. On the contrary, if you are the host, you may meet some laggards. In Turkey, time is considered to be relatively volatile, and unless it's a business meeting, you should be on time.

4. Be respectful to the elders

If you want to see a friend's parents, add "teyze" or "AMCA" after their name. These terms are meant to show respect. You can also try to pay homage with "ABI" or "abla" (brother or sister). When you travel, you may hear men call each other "ABI", which is a bit like saying "brother" in the context of friendship.

5. Gold means a lot in Turkish wedding

If you are going to Turkey for a wedding, please pay attention to the special significance of gold in the wedding. Guests will present gold coins to the bride and groom, as well as gold bracelets for family gifts. Gold is attached to a silk belt around the necks of the bride and groom. There is a simple and fairly common reason: gold is considered a reserve currency and will never depreciate.

6. In the mosque

Although Turkey is secular and modern, most of its population is Muslim. You must show respect wherever you worship. A woman should cover her head, arms and legs. Men should also make sure their legs are covered.

7. Do not shoes at homes

Never wear shoes at home. Put your shoes at the door. The owner may even offer some slippers.

8. Bring gifts

Turkish people are very hospitable. If you want to make friends with them, you will definitely be invited to their home. When you do this, it's important to bring a small gift: food or flowers are the most appropriate, and it's best to avoid alcohol, because many Turkish people don't drink for religious reasons.

9. The owner always pays

If you go out to dinner with your Turkish friends, it's important to remember that! Generally speaking, whoever treats pays. Sharing the bill is almost unheard of: it is understood that the guest will return it in the future.

Generally speaking, hospitality is a sign of welcoming Turkish friends and family. Surprisingly, mass tourism has not reduced the desire of Turkish people to welcome tourists. In the 21st century, Turkish people are keen to show foreign tourists their homes and countries and learn their cultures and ways just as tourists do.

The first time I started writing in my target language is when I was taking notes by write free hand. I wanted to type but the letters of Turkish are different from English, so I am not sure how to type Turkish, so until now I still need to copy and paste those letters from Wikipedia when I was typing Turkish. I also love to take notes by writing free hand because I can more easily memorize what I was writing in this way. I began to see some patterns of word structure because of the vowels and even some grammars related to words (because Turkish put grammar into the word). I believe we are still writing simple sentences, such as telling time, self-introduction and greetings, which don’t have complicated grammar or meaning. But we read some complex sentences before and I believe it is more like put complex context into the simple sentences, so basically complex sentences can be split into simple sentence and some small words/phrases. Because when I was learning English, we always tried to understand a complex sentence by splitting it into a simple version.

Right now, it is more like my language partner give me an example of how to express a sentence and then I followed it to write my own sentences. For example, she told how to write “my mom Fatma is 60 years old’ in Turkish which is “Benim annem Fatma, altmiş yaşinda.” And then I will write a sentence telling my father’s name and age in Turkish, which is “Benim babam Guoqing, elli yaşinda.”

Language is not only a tool of communication but also a unique expression of different cultures, natural environments, histories, human nature, and heritages. In order to protect human cultural heritage, one of the necessary works to do is to protect endangered languages. Language maintains the vitality of tradition, motivates us to understand and respect history and the world we live in, and connects different societies beyond national boundaries and time.

In today's society, some languages are becoming extinct in a very fast way. No matter for political, geographical and cultural reasons, the fragile environment plays a critical role in the death of language. The rise of a language is not only the language symbol itself but also covers all kinds of phenomena behind the language - economy, geography, politics, etc. A language can also be seen as the crystallization of highly concentrated human thoughts and one of the important cultural symbols. When a language becomes endangered, more things supported by the language are also facing the risk of collapse.          

The extinction of language can be either voluntary or involuntary: the voluntary extinction may be influenced by the environment of language, and the language will be reformed and changed from the inside of the language group, and involuntary extinction can be explained by the external political oppression.

Many linguists worked so hard in order to protect endangered languages around the world. These linguists deeply studied these endangered languages, go to the place where native speakers speak to record videos and sound materials and organize it into a large database for many language scholars to use.

Last week, we were still learning the expressions of numbers and we began to practice listening. Hazal asked her friends to record their greetings and self-introduction and she played these recordings to me. It was really fun! But at the beginning, I could not understand a thing at all, because I never practiced Turkish listening before. After practicing for a while, it began to become better! Also, we used a Turkish learning tool during the class, and I found my studying result is not bad! I can get a 95 on average for some spelling and listening tests. However, I kept forgetting there are no letter q, w, or x in Turkish and I asked my friend who learned Turkish for a long time. Here are some reasons he told me.

He said this question is the same as why we no longer use traditional Chinese characters in Chinese now. In fact, most Turkish don't know much about this problem (as we do not know too much about traditional Chinese characters as well) and don't care a lot, because these 29 letters are enough, and they don't need extra Q, W, X to compose words (simplified characters are more convenient to use).

First of all, Turkish belongs to Turkic language family, and Turkic language family focuses a lot on spoken language, so how to read is more important than how to write in the Turkish language. As for letters, it's enough as long as people can read and understand. So the requirement of letters is not that high. Of course, the later Ottoman Turkic culture reached its peak, and the writing became more and more advanced.

Another reason is that the primary reason for the change from Osman to Latin in the period of character reformation was to reduce the pressure on people to read. At that time, the purpose was to be as simple and easy to read as possible, so unnecessary letters were left out, including Q, W, X.
In fact, the corresponding letters of Q, W, X are K, V, H. in Turkish, Q, W, X and K, V, H are basically homophones, for example, tavuk and tawuk (chicken) have the same pronunciation, so in Turkish view, W and V are basically the same. So why bother to have three more redundant letters.

At the begging, I found learning Turkish was so hard because it was totally different from all the languages I learned before. But after listening and knowing more about Turkish, I began to find the pattern, and everything became much easier than the beginning. Now I can memorize Turkish words much faster, and when I watch Turkish movies, I can even understand some very basic words or sentences that we learned in class. Also, it was always surprising to see how unique Turkish culture is, and it is very different from other European countries as well. I felt like they loved to enjoy their lives and proud of making really fantastic foods that impressed tourists from all over the world. Now I’m expecting to see the more in-depth insight of Turkish culture and their values.

I was continuously thinking about the meaning of studying a new language when I study Turkish. I realize I like learning language because I want to experience different ways of expression. Language is a system to display ideas and is also an art, so no matter in Turkish, English, Chinese, dancing, music, or painting, in my opinion, they are all different languages. In the process of tapping the semantic meaning behind each symbol, understanding a new structure of grammar, and getting to know a new cultural background, we can see a new world. We can use a new language or choose the language most suitable for the idea we really want to express, and express our inner feelings incisively and vividly. It's a beautiful thing.

Language also means adapting a brand-new world view. Learning a language is learning to see the world from a new perspective. In fact, every culture's way of observing the world is reflected in the language. After learning a new language and entering the system of that language and culture, we will begin to feel that there is no right or wrong, or right and wrong does not matter anymore; there are only differences among people, and then people will become more empathetic and open-minded.

I watched a Turkish movie yesterday called Issiz adam. I watched this movie because I really liked the main actor from the other Turkish movie Hazal asked us to watch. In the film, Alpher is the owner of a restaurant. Like nostalgic music, he is a lonely man, every night he will spend money sleeping with different women. Then during the day, he lived a normal life as a good chef. At night, he began to linger over different women's bodies.

Until a beautiful encounter, he met Ada, a beautiful and temperament woman, who has her own second-hand clothing store and only designs clothes for children, but she lives in a very ordinary and even a little bit tedious life. However, they fell in love.

It's just that after a period of getting along and having fun, Alpher suddenly says that they should break up, which makes Ada very unacceptable. But still, they don't contact each other anymore.

Alpher feels nothing about breaking about until one morning, the hairpin Ada left at his house slipping down from the glass, he cried, and he realized he hasn't let go this short-lived relationship at all. Then Alpher began his life being alone, with a yearning and guilty to wait for Ada.

It's just unexpected they will meet again many years later. They meet at the gate of the cinema. Ada cut her hair to very short, and at that time she was having tea with friends. She and Alpher stand face to face at the entrance of the cinema and cover up their inner nostalgia and love with lies. This scene made my tears keep falling down.

For the last hug, there was a hilarious scene. I thought the story would have a perfect ending, but after the hug, there was endless sadness. The music rang again, and I cried. Even if they turned their backs after hugging, Ada cried. Alpher also walked out of the cinema, looking dazed and disappointed.

The movie doesn't talk about love exaggeratedly. It begins as a simple meeting. Because of their appearance or hobbies, they started to fall in love. And they were separated by misunderstanding, and then it went through a few twists and turned to a really realistic ending. The movie makes people understand that love exists, but love is not always perfect in real life. Everyone has their own problems and puzzles.

Maybe the thing I'm confused about is that if two people have a very romantic experience of 1-2 months, can both men and women miss each other for 5 years? Before this idea, I thought that the film was very practical, and this made my opinion swing, because I felt that people's ability to adapt to the environment is strong, and emotional change is relatively easy, so this is not realistic. Of course, maybe my life experience is not that long, and I haven't seen such feelings before.

The director and screenwriter are really delicate, and the actors are so great, especially the leading actors. From the beginning to the end, I actually really understand the reason why Alpher made those "wrong" decisions because I made very similar mistakes before and sometimes we just cannot control these things to happen, even though you knew you would regret it one day.

I always love to know the history of one language and how it relates to other languages. I know Turkish belongs to the Altaic language family, and Mongolian does too because they share noteworthy similarities in vocabulary, morphological and syntactic structure, and certain phonological features. But I found it a little shocking because I have Mongolian friends, and what they write and speak is really different from Turkish. Mongolian has much more complicated letters. But I think it was more challenging to understand maybe because I studied English as my second language and letters like these look more “normal” to me. In the beginning, I felt Turkish sounds like Japanese, but after doing some research, I found they are totally different from each other, and the most similar language to Turkish is Azerbaijani. After learning some basic Turkish, I found that French and Turkish shared a lot in common. For example, they both have six subjects, and suffix in the verb would change with the subjects. Also, the letter “j” in Turkish pronounces precisely the same as French and Turkish uses “Merci” as thank you. So based on my previous experience in studying French, Turkish is becoming easier to learn for me. However, I am not sure whether they are from the same location or language at the very beginning of history because I think it is more like Turkish borrowed these from French, and my language partner also said so. And the other day Chet and I found the way to say “hello” in Turkish and Arabian is very similar because, in Turkish, it is “Merhaba” while in Arabian, it is “Marhaban”. It is also very similar to the phenomenon mentioned in the article that different languages shared similar ways to say “mother” because those cognates are derived from the proto-Indo-European word “mehter.”

Last week we watched lots of videos of Turkish foods and learned eating habits in Turkey. I was surprised to see that Turkey has such a wonderful food culture, because I thought European foods are similar and did not know too much about specific Turkish food before. My language partner said no one complained Turkish foods, instead, everyone loved Turkish foods so much after travelling in Turkey and tasting local foods. I enjoyed those food videos so much because I am a 100% food lover and food culture in China is really important as well. I hope one day I can go to Turkey and taste all foods we saw in the video, because they looked so tasty and I have never tried any food like these before. Here are some popular dishes in Turkey.

Menemen

It was made by eggs and different vegetables. It is a traditional Turkish breakfast. This is more like a creamy sauce and you can eat it with breads. I really want to try this one because it looks so delicious and nutritious. I really appreciate how they value breakfast and eat very well in breakfast.

Köfte

It was a Turkish traditional main dish made by beef or lamb and usually made as shape of flat cake or ball. You can eat it with sandwich or salad. Some Turkish love to eat it with Turkish yogurt which is another thing I really want to try.

Mantı

It is Turkish version of “dumplings”. It looks like dumplings or wonton in China but with sauce on it. It has special flavor in it and the filling in it is chili beef or chili lamb. They often fired these “dumplings” and serve with butter or Turkish yogurt. I guess the taste of it is very rich.

Kuzu Tandır

It is roast lamb which is a Turkish traditional food. It was cooked slowly and needs a long time to be done. You can eat it with Turkish yogurt, rice or potato. I had similar thing in Mongolia before and it was so good! But I believe Turkish version of roast lamb has a unique flavor.

Lahmacun

It is Turkish scone and you can find it in in every street because it is so convenient to eat but still delicious. The bottom of it is very crispy and it has ground meat, salad and lemon sauce on the top of it. It is more like a pizza I believe. It is one of the most popular street foods in Turkey.

Doner Kabab

It is one of the most popular street foods in Turkey and it is becoming worldwide popular. I learned this food from my French class and my professor said Kabab can be found everywhere in France so I thought it was French food before. But actually it was from Turkey.

Turkish Coffee

It is the most important drink and Turkey has its own special coffee beans (and other ingredients). The most popular ingredients are not allowed to export so this kind of Turkish coffee can only be found in Turkey. Coffee is a crucial part in Turkish people’s daily life. No matter during the work, chatting with friends or after having a meal, they all need a cup of Turkish coffee.

The article mentioned pragmatics and it has great variations among societies, cultures and etc. For example, Japanese learners of English would use “I’m sorry” to convey their gratitude to a person who is in high status, while this would cause misunderstanding by native speakers since this actually means apologize in most of situations. This reminded me an experience when I was in an international school and a friend of mine is Germany. One time we were waiting for the bus, and we were talking about the tests we took the other day. She told me that she failed the grammar test, and I replied “oh, I’m sorry”. What I want to convey is I feel sorry for her or I am sorry to hear that, but she did not get the meaning (I guess Germany don’t use “I’m sorry” to convey this kind of meaning), so she asked me with surprise: “Why you are sorry? What did you do? It is not your fault that I failed a test!” I did not know how to explain it to her, and that was the first time I realized how pragmatics might be different across cultures. Also, in Turkish, they like to use a short sentence “Kolay gelsin”, which means “may it be easy for you”. They use it every day everywhere, they would say it to sanitation worker or friend preparing an exam or etc. But in Chinese there is no such expression, because we would use “thank you” to sanitation worker and “加油” (similar to “go for it” in English, but not exactly the same meaning) to friend preparing for exams. I feel like there is no such expression in English either.

I really enjoyed the classes in last two weeks, because we have studied lots of new stuff and watched lots of Turkish cultural videos which were very interesting. A good progress is that right now I can pronounce Turkish letters pretty correctly and do the basic greetings in Turkish. And I also found it was getting more interesting when I became more familiar with this language. Sometimes I think Turkish sounds like Japanese a lot, but I cannot speak Japanese, so I really want to ask people who can speak Japanese whether they feel the same way. Also, we studied numbers in Turkish and I have already memorized them by using a kind of stupid way. For example, “sekiz” is eight in Tukish, and I easily memorized it because it sounds like “赛棋子” in Chinese which means “chess competition”, so I remembered numbers very fast in this way. And they are not very hard actually, because Turkish does not have specific words for 11, 12, and etc., they use “on bir” or “on iki” as 11 and 12, while “on” is 10 and “bir” is 1. Other numerical patterns are basically as same as English.

We also learnt expressions related to time in Turkish. It’s interesting to see that they don’t have the expression of a.m. or p.m. and they use 12 hour rule, because my language partner told me that they can tell the morning or the evening by looking out at the sun and she believes it is always unnecessary to use a.m. and p.m. thing (I thought in the same way all the time, maybe I should live in Turkey). They also loved to use the expression of “10 minutes to 9” or “5 minutes past 5” to stand for “8:50” and “5:05”, which are “Dokuza on var” and “Beşi beş geçiyor”. I had trouble with expressing time in this way at the beginning because we don’t express time like this in China. If it is 8:50, we will just say “eight o’clock fifty”.

We also watched lots of Turkish music videos and Turkish food videos. Originally, I thought Turkish music would be very different from any music form I listened before, maybe Turkish music would include some religious stuff. However, we watched several Turkish pop music videos, and I was very surprised to find that they were really similar to American pop music and the music videos are similar to American style as well. I really like Ariana Grande, and I found one of Turkish singers we watched that day has very similar style to Ariana, including dancing style and make-ups. We also watched two videos that they invited several American kids to taste Turkish snacks and most popular foods. And Turkish foods look so great, because I love cholates and meats, which Turkish popular snacks and foods contain a lot. Those kids in videos also loved Turkish foods. I asked my language partner whether Richmond has great Turkish restaurant, but unfortunately the answer is no. But if I go to New York or Washington DC one day, I must try the Turkish restaurants there, because my language partner said these two places have good Turkish foods. And she also said every one fell in love with Turkish foods after tasting it, no matter where you come from.

The article mainly talks about the detailed explanation and classifications of phones. Last time I was confused about the difference between phones and phenetics but after reading this, I have a deeper understanding of phones and make it pretty clear, so Phone is mainly about production and perception of speech sounds in any language, while Phonetic is about the sound pattern that occurred in one language. In the article, the author mentioned Nasals, such as [m] or [n] in English, which reminded me of my Cantonese studying process in Hong Kong. In Cantonese, there are lots of words ending in Nasals while Mandarin words are not, and the nasals in Cantonese are very unique and really hard to pronounce exactly correct. For example, the word “Hong Kong” in Cantonese pronounces [hoeng gong], so two words all end in Nasals and I could not pronounce these sounds at the beginning. Lots of people think Cantonese is very similar to Mandarin, but the truth is the pronunciations differ a lot. However, my Cantonese professor said that young people in HK loved to ignored those Nasal stops and made the Cantonese pronunciations nowadays became closer to Mandarin, which is much more simplified. Also, the article mentioned vowels, which is a tough problem I met recently in Turkish studying. There are 9 forms of each word because of the 9 combinations of vowels in Turkish, and it is very easy to be confused since I have never seen these many changes in a word in any languages because of vowels. I might need lots of practices of it to find the pattern.

Last week, we watched a video about the story of a Turkish man, who has seen himself as a woman since he was little and loved making up and wearing feminine clothes. He lived in a relatively under-developed village and people living in the village are pretty conservative. So for a very long time, every one tried to stay away from him as far as possible and he lived alone, because people considered him as a big weirdo or even a psycho and his parents died when he was around 26. However, he never gave up himself and began to let people accept him by helping all the village people no matter when no matter how as long as he can be helpful. From that time. People began to talk to him and find out he is a really outstanding person, because he is very ebullient and kind person with a soft and sensible heart. Then, many people, including old grandpas, considered him as an important part of the village, or even a member of their family. They invited him to have breakfast every day and they found he is such a perfect person. Afterwards, he got the chance to do a surgery which can turn him into a “real woman” physically, but he refused to do so because he believed it is not necessary anymore and everyone has already accepted him as a woman. He believed those who did not like him before would still not like him even after he did the surgery, which I agreed a lot because some people just would not change their minds in lots of reasons. I was pretty shocked at the beginning when I saw this video, because I’ve been in an environment for a long time that every individual is respected and accepted no matter how different you might be from other people. The public would even stand out and speak for those people who did not earn enough respect because of the difference. I never imagined the situations in some places can be that worse. However, I began to understand the circumstance after further thinking, because in China, LGBT group still cannot be accepted by most of people in China especially people in my parent’s age or older. When browsing some online social medias, you can still see some people would say bad words to this group of people. But with the society making progress, lots of people began to accept and respect the individual difference, because we can see that Chinese people in our age has a really open mind toward LGBT group and we even argue with our parents about whether we should respect the difference. Lots of people, like those village people in the video, were growing up in an environment that they were taught to behave similarly and were not allowed to do things that seemed “abnormal”, so they cannot easily change their perspective or values since they has lived in this environment for half of their lives and they felt “safe” in it. Also, they did not have chances to know a person well since they refused to get any tough with people who look different from the very beginning. However, if they got to know these people, they would find that they did not have any difference at all and they could be really great people. And the glad thing is more and more people in this world began to have respect to this group of people and central cities in Turkey actually really respect the transgender people. The situation in the video only happened in small villages or remote places.