Today me and Ms. Hanife met in the Global Studio to start working on Turkish. I
thought that our first session is going to be easy, but even though it was the first
session I was truly challenged. Me and my language partner immediately started
speaking in Turkish and I was impressed when I realized that I could understand
most of what she says. I realized that I can understand a lot of Turkish but I have
difficulties speaking it. One of my goals as I mentioned in my learning plan is to be
able to better communicate in Turkish so I told Ms. Hanife how I would like to focus
on speaking/listening. During our first session we revised some of our covered
material from last semester and we are not off to a good start. I realized that I still
had minor difficulties with certain topics from last semester but I believe that I will
comprehend as we revise them even more this semester. This week, we worked on
some grammar, revised previous semester’s concepts, and listened to Turkish songs.
Ms. Hanife told me about this one very famous Turkish singer Sertab Erener. This
singer is not only famous in Turkey but throughout Europe because she won on the
Eurovision contest. We listened to a few of her songs, and I would read the lyrics off
the screen while she was singing. I tried to sing along but I found her songs to be fast
so I could not catch up with her. Ms. Hanife gave me an electronic book that contains
short Turkish stories that are written for Turkish learners and assigned me to read
three stories. She also gave me a book that talks about Turkish famous food and the
text is written in both Turkish and English. In my opinion it is very important that
the text is translated to English as well because this is how I can refer to unknown
words that I have trouble with. Also, Ms. Hanife told me about this translator called
Tureng which is apparently much more accurate than Google translate, it gives not
only synonyms but also detailed explanation of each word and its usage. I think it
will be very helpful in my further learning.
I also learned about this expression “oof ya” that apparently Turkish people use
in everyday language. I heard of it before and my former roommates would often
use it, but for some reason I thought that it was a bad word. However, this week I
learned that it is actually not a bad word but Turkish people use it when they are
either annoyed or when they hear something that they did not expect to hear. Later
this week, I said this to my Turkish friend that I work with and he found it very
funny that I used it because only Turks use it and he was really surprised when he
heard it. He said I am embracing Turkish culture to the fullest. This actually gave me
motivation to work harder.
Comments