Hello, attached is my cultural project powerpoint! Let me know if you have any questions!
Bird%20language%20in%20Black%20Sea%20Region%20of%20Turkey.pptx
Zachary Stewart's Posts (57)
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I am going to New York in a couple of days so I wanted to share another recording of me introducing myself for when/if I meet any Turkish people there!
Attached is my learning plan with evaluations for the semester.
I already talked about this in one of my learning journals but I figured that it works as an artifact as well. I found this YouTube channel of this Spanish person who speaks Turkish really well. I felt really proud of myself watching this because I could understand most of what he was saying. I had to slow the speed of the video down to 0.5, but I still consider it as an accomplishment haha. Watching his video actually inspired me to post videos of myself speaking Turkish on YouTube. I am just going to wait another year (I think) so that I can improve my spontaneous speech. I am perfectionist haha.
This artifact is a small conversation that I had with Gökhan practicing my spontaneous speech walking home from a class that we had in the library. At the end, I got mad because Gökhan did not correct my mistake because we were recording haha!
Gökhan and I usually message each other in Turkish to organize our class meet times and to talk about what we will cover so here is an example of that where Gokhan asks me what we were going to cover one specific evening.
Because of classes and other commitments for wrapping up the semester, the amount of lessons that I have a week have unfortunately decreased. My sessions with Gökhan have mostly focused on polishing my speaking skills. I believe that I have gotten to a point where I am a familiar with most grammar structures - i.e. I can recognize a lot - but I have problems with producing the structures in timely manner. My biggest challenge is talking about “I said…”, “you said…”, or “he/she said…”, which requires the use of this complex subordinate clause structure. I am able to produce it correctly (...sometimes) but it requires A LOT of thinking. It honestly feels like a math equation. However, in comparison to the beginning of the semester, I believe that I have made a good amount of progress on my timing on responses and also with my listening skills. I intend to practice what I have learned a bit with Turkish people when I go to New York. (Hopefully I can understand them!) I am looking forward to the summer when I am going to have much more time to practice these skills. Gökhan told me that he can set me up with some of his friends so that I could skype them to keep my skills at par. I am also looking forward to seeing my progression in the language in the future.
Ohh! Also, I started watching this show on Netflix called Winter Sun to improve my listening skills. I watch the show with the subtitles in Turkish so that I would be forced to pay attention to what they are saying. I think that it is working out pretty well. I also found this youtube channel of this native Spanish speaker who posts videos helping Turkish people learning Spanish. His videos are also helpful for my listening skills because he speaks a little slower (I think). I think I can also understand him for the most part which makes me happy haha.
Here is a link to one of his videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUFeszBlDQI
I just realized how little time that I have left since the semester is coming to an end. Therefore, I decided to crank my lessons with Gökhan up a notch. Earlier in the semester, we had been meeting twice a week for two hours each but now we have started to meet every day in the week for an hour or so. I figured that this would be better as it would give me more exposure to the language. I believe that it has been working out well from my initial perspective because I am now constantly searching for words to contextualize the world around me. Gökhan also put me in contact with one of his co-workers from Turkey so I have started to practice my writing more with him.
Also, a friend and I just bought tickets to go to New York right before graduation so I decided to revamp my personal Turkish journal entries writing about random things. I want to have as much exposure to the language as possible so that I don’t take forever trying to say a single sentence when I meet people. In my first couple entries, I reviewed writing my self introductions, why I want to learn Turkish, and also about my time in Barcelona. I had Gökhan edit what I wrote to make sure that the sentences were right.
With regards to the lesson, Berhaun reacted fine for the most part. I think that she might have been a little overwhelmed because I covered a lot from “hello” to asking someone how they are. I think the only thing that she really remembered was how to say “hello” and “good bye” because “hello” in Turkish is the same as in Tigrinya and she has heard me say “good bye” to Gokhan a lot in Turkish. I guess I now know not overwhelm my student with too much next time.
A few weeks ago, Gökhan and I covered grocery vocabulary. I really wanted to put what I learned to the test so we decided to go on an excursion to Short Pump and Target with Berhaun (who drove). I did not review as many words as I should have before the trip so Gökhan had to re-teach me a lot of words. However, I believe that everything worked out well because I could actually visualize the vocabulary that I was learning. Many of the words, such as gömlek (shirt), aşkı (hanger), and elbise (dress), stayed in my head after the experience. I was also happy about the experience because I could practice using the -dık suffix that allows me to form subordinate clauses in Turkish. I am looking forward to more learning activities like this to keep the process interesting.
Also, in class, we started reading children’s novels in Turkish. I usually read the sentences in Turkish first and then I try to translate the sentences to make sure that I understand. I have improved with recognizing grammatical structures. Some of the vocabulary has been very specific and not very useful but I have still been able to improve my pronuncation. After reading the small novels, we covered responding to easy questions about the story in Turkish, which I believe helped alot. I am going to keep up with these things and try to do some more stuff to keep practicing.
Also also, I am going to teach my friend, Berhaun, introductions in Turkish using the mind map approach that I covered with Gökhan a couple weeks ago. I am a visual learner so I thought it was an extremely helpful way to learn. I don’t know what kind of learner she is so I think that it would be interesting to see how she would react.
So I guess I should start of this post sharing that I figured out the mystery of the potential tense. It turns out that it’s not as hard as I thought it was. I think that there was mostly a misunderstanding between Gökhan and I so I kinda freaked out and shut down. In that lesson, we had already gone two hours covering other material so I was probably a little stressed. In the event that you are curious how to say them, gelemem (I cannot come), gelmeyebilirim (I may not come), gelemeyebilirim (I may not be able to come) are the forms and they all come from the verm gelmek (to come). I think I am getting to the point where all of these suffixes are starting to look the same so I am going to review them more with Gökhan to make sure that I understand them.
Aside from those, Gökhan and I made a mind map of daily things (e.g. bed, closet, spoon, fork, knife, glasses) and also of the airport (e.g. security, make an anouncement, baggage). I thought that it was a nice and new way to learn vocabulary that I hadn’t considered before. We covered a lot of words so I have a lot of review to do but I am interested in the activity and look forward to doing this with other languages that I study.
Okay! So things were going great for the past few classes until my last class covering the potential suffix! This suffix allows you to form sentences like “I can come”.This is fairly simple to make for positive sentences in the present tense. In my last class, I learned that this can get a little more complicated for negative sentences because a subtle change in entonation and morphology can make that potential statement either “I cannot come”, “I may not come”, or “I may not be able to come”. To be completely honest, I still do not understand it. Thankfully, there is a lesson of this on the podcast that I listen to (Turkish Tea Time). I listened to the episode some time last semester but I thought that it was too advanced for me at the time so I did not pay as much attention. But since I am a Turkish pro now (not really haha), I am going to check it out again and take notes before I ask Gökhan again.
On the bright side of this somber entry, I am getting more used to this really complicated suffix to form subordinate clauses, specifically forming sentences like “I think that …” Unfortunately, it takes me an arm and a leg to finally make the sentences so I will be practicing those sentences a lot for the next couple weeks in order to improve my speed in production.
We’re back!! Woot woot! I did a lot of studying over winter break so the transition for me getting back to work was not that bad thankfully. I had a lot of time to polish the tenses that I learned. I also made a list of the most important words for communicating in any language. These are words that I believe to occur more frequently in everyday speech. I hope that this will help me be able to communicate with not so long pauses. I also have a list of transition and filler words to help fill in these blanks. I showed the list to Gökhan and he gave me some suggestions for some more words.
For the semester, I want to improve my speaking and listening skills overall so I started writing journal entries. In my first entry, I wrote about what I did over the winter break. After I wrote it, Gökhan edited it and gave me some suggestions. Writing the entry was pretty easy for the most part because I used fairly easy words, but I am going to try use more complex vocabularies and structures in the future to challenge myself.
As far as class, we briefly reviewed all of the tenses and cases that we covered last semester and then went right into learning more vocabulary. I wanted to learn how to talk about movies in Turkish so Gökhan prepared a worksheet for me on movie reviews. From the class, I learned the passive tense saying sentences like “the movie was directed by…”, which was fairly easy compared to other tenses that I had learned before. In the next few classes, I am going to practice this tense more to make sure that I understand it.
Reflect upon what you have learned about the culture(s) you have been studying.
As I admitted in my first cultural post for this semester, I did not really have as an in depth understanding about Turkish culture as I could have. Most of the aspects of culture that I learned was pretty broad and non-specific to different regions of Turkey (but, at the same time, I think that that was fair considering that I was simultaneously learning a lot of words and grammatical structures that were completely foreign to me). This semester, I believe that I did a fairly good job focusing on different regions of the country. I had several lessons with Gökhan, in which he would tell me some history about different regions of the country in Turkish. He had to speak really slow and repeat a lot of new words for me but I think it worked out for the most part haha.
Of all the cultural topics that we learned, I think my favorite was finding out that there is apparently this honey called deli bal made in northeastern Turkey that can make you high if you take a really small amount!!! It can kill you if you take too much. Isn’t that crazy?! The Turks actually gave some of this honey to some Greeks to stop an invasion at one point. It’s kind of scary but really cool at the same time.
I did not want to bore you with the science behind it, but here is a link for more information about this if you are interested! https://modernfarmer.com/2014/09/strange-history-hallucinogenic-mad-honey/
All in all, it has been a fun semester! Hopefully, I can go to Turkey soon!
Let’s talk about sports!! Okay, I am going to preface this post stating that I have very little interest in sports but Gökhan says that soccer is a big part of the culture so I can’t not learn about it. There are three big teams in Turkey that are based in Istanbul: Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, and Beşiktaş. According to Gökhan, they are not that good compared to other teams like FC Barcelona or Real Madrid, but people go CRAZY in Turkey when these teams play. They even shut down a lot of stores early sometimes for the games.
While learning about the different sports teams, Gökhan and I actually read this random article in Turkish. http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/spor/963233/Fenerbahce_taraftarindan_Senol_Gunes_e_kufurlu_tepki.html. (It was the first thing that popped up. Thankfully it was really short haha). It is about a rivalry match between Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş and in which Fenerbahçe fans were cheering “Şenol Güneş Ölmedi Kalbimizde Yaşıyor” (“Şenol Güneş did not die, he lives in our hearts”). Şenol Güneş is the coach for the opposing team, Beşiktaş, so they were basically making fun of him because he apparently faked that he was hit by something from the tribunes. (Very dramatic, right? haha!) I found this lesson and article especially helpful because it gave me some insight to another part of the culture in a fun way and I learned a lot of new words like tezahürat yapmak (cheer), ruh (spirit, soul), aleyhine (against), tribün (tribune, bleachers), stat (stadium), and more. Oh! And I also got an idea about Turkish humor because “XXX ölmedi kalbimizde yaşıyor” is a common phrase that people use a lot jokingly.
While talking to Gökhan the other day, I realized that there are some interesting honorific differences in Turkish in comparison to English. In English (or at least in my English speaking community), I believe that the main honorifics are “Sir, Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Ma’am” and most people use these honorifics to show respect and distance from their interlocutor. While Turkish has similar honorifics, such as Beyefandi (Mr.) and Hanimefendi (Mrs.), it also has other honorifics that we lack in English. For example, abi is used to address a male that is slightly older. It literally means “older brother” and is used as a sign of respect. Abla, which means “older sister” also serves a similar purpose. In addition to these two, amca and teyze are commonly used to address older men and women. Although we have words like “dude” and “bro” in English, Gökhan mentioned that the use of these words are at times mandatory to show respect. Also, I was really intrigued by these words because I don’t really pay attention to my use of honorifics and it made me question myself.
Below is a list of these words mentioned and more!
A couple weeks ago, Gökhan sent me a video on Facebook about a community in northern Turkey that have developed a bird language, which is based off of WHISTLING (link shared below). I was completely amazed because I have never heard of anything like this in my life. I already struggle with whistling, so I can’t imagine being able to communicate this way. I think I’m going to stick with Turkish now and maybe learn some greetings in the bird language haha. Around 10,000 people use the language to communicate from far distances in the mountainous region. Interestingly however, the United Nations claim that the language is endangered because of the growing presence of cell phones in the region. I hope that they find a way to preserve the language!
Also, I found another video on YouTube about the Black Sea (karadeniz, northern) region of Turkey and it looks absolutely stunning! The link is shared below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQmF7kbOrmE
What are your cultural learning goals for this semester?
At the beginning of last semester, I had very little to no understanding about Turkish culture. I learned very broad information about Turkey as a whole instead of the different parts of the country. This semester, I plan to focus on the certain regions (cities) of the country that deviate from and contribute to the overall perception of Turkish culture. For example, I hope to explore some differences in the cuisine in varying parts of the country, some dialectal differences, tradition differences, etc. I am also interested in learning about what art and/or literature is famous in Turkey. I am going to refer mostly to Gökhan and the internet for this information.
I was listening to my Turkish podcast a few days ago and they were covering how to form adjective clauses. An example of this clause in the podcast was yanımda oturan adam (the man that is sitting next to me). I thought that this is an incredibly useful tool to know because it seems like something that I would use all the time. I understood the clause for the most part after rewinding the podcast a couple times. However, my goal for the week is to see more examples online and to practice making my own sentences using the clause. I am also going to confirm some things with Gökhan because there is another suffix that is used in some similar cases. In addition to this, my goal is to also continue practicing the past and future tenses by reviewing my notes and writing random sentences.
This week caught me off guard! My intention was to continue practicing the past tense but then Gökhan asked if I wanted to learn the past continuous tense, which is a mix of the past tense and the present tense. Of course, I said yes! We covered it and it seemed to click well for me so we went on to the FUTURE TENSE!!! I was beyond excited because I believe that this opens up more doors for possible sentences. I was also happy because I could remember the conjugations and it made sense to me. I honestly felt like a kid opening up Christmas presents for the first time. I was so excited that I even shared it on my snapchat story so I thought that I’d share it here. :)
The time has come! I have been very impatient with this and have been getting sneak peaks of this in the Turkish podcast that I found. My goal for this week was to learn the past tense!!! I want to be able to make as many sentences as possible and I don’t want time to be one of the things that is going to hinder my goal. I scheduled an extra meeting with Gökhan in which we loosely went over all of the conjugations. I think Gökhan was nervous to cover everything at once and overwhelming me. Interestingly however, I did not have a hard time getting used to the conjugations as we were covering it. I think that I am not as phased by them because I have seen so many different conjugations from Spanish to Portuguese to Italian to French and to Catalan. This isn’t my first rodeo. I think the examples that we covered during the lesson were very useful and make it easier for me to remember. I am goıng to keep practicing the tense!
