For the last two weeks, we learned numbers, times and family trees. We also watched many interesting videos which introduce a lot about Turkish food and music. I think I am much more familiar with the Turkish alphabets now, and I can pronounce almost every word in Turkish even though I do not understand its meaning. My instructor also praised my pronunciation which encouraged me a lot. At the beginning of every class, my instructor would have a small conversation with us in Turkish, and normally the conversation was about the thing we learned in lase class or simple greeting, which I think is good because it helped me to revise and remember what we learned in past.
When I first learned numbers, I thought it is really difficult to remember the pronunciations. Then I would translate the pronunciation into something I am familiar with. Also, the Turkish rule of expressing numbers is quite easy. For example, “bir” means one, and “on” means ten. So eleven is “on bir”. “bin” is thousand and “yuz” is a hundred. So “bir bin bir yuz on bir” is “1111” Also, we did a little exercise at the beginning of the last class to help us revise numbers, which I think really helped.
However, it is more difficult to express time in Turkish. There are two different expressions: past and to. For example, if the time is “10:08”, we would use “past” to say “8 minutes past ten”. And if the time is “10:45”, we would use “to” to say “15 minutes to 11”. Also, the expressions of the number are different, depending on whether it is “to” or “past”. I made a little summary table below to help me better memorize the rules.
We also learned family trees. Turkish culture really values family, so they have almost every person their own names. However, we only learned some basic ones. We learned father, mother, cousin, son, daughter, and husband. We also learned how to introduce their names and ages.
We also watched a very cute video of American kids trying Turkish food and snakes. I am so obsessed with Turkish food, so I enjoyed watching that video. Unfortunately, there is no Turkish food restaurant in Richmond, but my instructor said there are several really good Turkish restaurants in New York. I will definitely try them if I go to New York someday.
| Past | To |
1 | Biri | bıre |
2 | Ikiyi | ıkıye |
3 | Ügü | üse |
4 | Dördi | dörde |
5 | Besi | Bese |
6 | Altiyi | Altiya |
7 | Yediyi | Yediyl |
8 | Sekizi | Sekize |
9 | Dokyzy | Dokuza |
10 | onu | Ona |
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