Monthly Language Journal #3 -
From mid-October to now I have continued to make strides in my Turkish learning. Most saliently, I have officially advanced from Turkish A1 to Turkish A2. Despite my level arguably reaching A2 earlier in the semester, it marks my first major academic milestone with Turkish. I spent most of the month learning about -dir and -dan beri endings. The former signifies ‘for’ but in a matter of an unspecified origin of time. For example, if wanted to say that “I am waiting for the bus for an hour,” I it would look like “Ben otobüsü saattir bekliyorum.” The latter means since, so if I wished to express that “I am waiting for the bus since 1:00,” I would state “Ben otobüsü saat birden beri bekliyorum.” Moreover, I worked on learning how to say before/after for verbs and nouns. In the case of nouns, it recieves a -dan önce/sonra ending, while verbs either get -madan önce or -diktan sonra added to them. In the event that I wanted to say that “I did not eat before class,” I would remark “Dersten önce yemek yemedim.” For verbs, if I desired to say that “I will finish my homework before eating dinner,” it would appear as “Akşam yemeği yemeden önce ödevimi bitireceğim.” All underlined parts of these endings signify their variability concerning vowel harmony and potential hard consonants of each word.
The last section of my A1 learning, which was arguably the hardest for me, was learning about the -ki suffix. Besides meaning ‘that’ in certain contexts in its independent form in a sentence, it either fills for a noun or transitions a noun with the locative case attached into a modified adjective. In the case of the first situation, “I have a good phone but yours is newer” translates as “Ben iyi bir telefonum var ama seninki daha yeni.” The second case, which replaces the possessive and statement of location cases, such as if I were to say “the book on the table,” I would simply state “masadaki kitabı.” This took me a substantial amount of time to comprehend, and I am aiming to utilize it more in conversation to create more fluidity in my speech.
Incidentally, my most important goal at the moment is to integrate more natural pauses and interruptions into my speech. Rather than saying “um” while thinking, as we do in English, in Turkish speakers say “eh.” Moreover, utilizing words like “yani,” akin to saying the unneeded form of the word ‘like’ in English, will also greatly improve my conversational abilities. Therefore, I believe that I could have more consistently practiced my conversational and spoken Turkish over the next month in preparation for my trip to Turkey on December 17th. I have definitely found Turkish to be the most rewarding language I have endeavored to learn, and it has motivated me to continue my language education beyond the limits of school for the first time in my life. As for the next month of Turkish, I believe that I will continue to learn more moods and tenses, along with prepositions and suffixes, to further diversify my language portfolio.
From mid-October to now I have continued to make strides in my Turkish learning. Most saliently, I have officially advanced from Turkish A1 to Turkish A2. Despite my level arguably reaching A2 earlier in the semester, it marks my first major academic milestone with Turkish. I spent most of the month learning about -dir and -dan beri endings. The former signifies ‘for’ but in a matter of an unspecified origin of time. For example, if wanted to say that “I am waiting for the bus for an hour,” I it would look like “Ben otobüsü saattir bekliyorum.” The latter means since, so if I wished to express that “I am waiting for the bus since 1:00,” I would state “Ben otobüsü saat birden beri bekliyorum.” Moreover, I worked on learning how to say before/after for verbs and nouns. In the case of nouns, it recieves a -dan önce/sonra ending, while verbs either get -madan önce or -diktan sonra added to them. In the event that I wanted to say that “I did not eat before class,” I would remark “Dersten önce yemek yemedim.” For verbs, if I desired to say that “I will finish my homework before eating dinner,” it would appear as “Akşam yemeği yemeden önce ödevimi bitireceğim.” All underlined parts of these endings signify their variability concerning vowel harmony and potential hard consonants of each word.
The last section of my A1 learning, which was arguably the hardest for me, was learning about the -ki suffix. Besides meaning ‘that’ in certain contexts in its independent form in a sentence, it either fills for a noun or transitions a noun with the locative case attached into a modified adjective. In the case of the first situation, “I have a good phone but yours is newer” translates as “Ben iyi bir telefonum var ama seninki daha yeni.” The second case, which replaces the possessive and statement of location cases, such as if I were to say “the book on the table,” I would simply state “masadaki kitabı.” This took me a substantial amount of time to comprehend, and I am aiming to utilize it more in conversation to create more fluidity in my speech.
Incidentally, my most important goal at the moment is to integrate more natural pauses and interruptions into my speech. Rather than saying “um” while thinking, as we do in English, in Turkish speakers say “eh.” Moreover, utilizing words like “yani,” akin to saying the unneeded form of the word ‘like’ in English, will also greatly improve my conversational abilities. Therefore, I believe that I could have more consistently practiced my conversational and spoken Turkish over the next month in preparation for my trip to Turkey on December 17th. I have definitely found Turkish to be the most rewarding language I have endeavored to learn, and it has motivated me to continue my language education beyond the limits of school for the first time in my life. As for the next month of Turkish, I believe that I will continue to learn more moods and tenses, along with prepositions and suffixes, to further diversify my language portfolio.
Comments
Congrats on making it to A2 Turkish! That is amazing and very impressive. I totally understand the desire to integrate more natural pauses into your speaking, these brief moments are actually crucial to sounding more native! I hope you will be able to achieve this goal in the coming months.