When we speak and interact with people from within our own cultures, I don't think that we often stop and look at what we're saying, examining it in terms of what it illustrates about our cultures and lifestyles. I know that I certainly do not. Oftentimes I take for granted my own way of saying things, and it can cause a lot of confusion when I am dealing with people of other cultures.
My roommate is an international student from Bangladesh, and although she is fairly Americanized from watching movies and TV from America, we still have instances between us where intentions with our languages are not clear. In one instance, she and I were sitting in the room and I had the A/C blasting. We were both reading; however, she gets up, goes to her dresser, and puts on some socks. She sits back down, and I noticed this. "Where are you going?" I asked. "Nowhere," she said.
"Oh, then why did you put your socks on?"
"I was trying to tell you to turn the cold air off."
I simply was not used to that sort of communication, but she certainly was. American English is an extremely direct language; this much is obvious in our every day speech. While going through the language packet that was given to us in class, I found it very interesting to see the differences between a "direct" and "indirect" language and I was able to re-identify this conflict I had had with my roommate over a simple communication barrier.
I think that Turkish would be a fairly indirect language (and not just because Nuray Hocam told us so). Geographically, Turkey lies between two large cultural hubs of collectivist peoples: Eastern Europe and Asia. Most share a common heritage, and though the nation is relatively large, it is still small enough for some sort of a singular culture. Additionally, Turks are for the most part very nationalistic and patriotic. This unifying characteristic is enough to create another stronghold culturally within the people. I have not yet learned enough language so that I can identify particular examples of some indirect speech, but something about the Turkish culture strikes me as collectivist in essence and the language very indirect.
In the book the concept of dialects were discussed. When I used to see my Turkish friends they would make fun of one another for their different Turkish accents. Of course, I not knowing the language, I could not tell the difference. Today I can notice that one dialect is different from one another, but I cannot tell how exactly that is - I suppose it is just intuitive. It is interesting to see that dialects occur all over the world, although this seems common sense. Dialects are really just different inflections on different words, or the usage of words different in relation to another dialect, that are exacerbated when this pocket of language speakers are self-contained. This is a natural and universal phenomenon. US dialects are much different from one another in only a few areas in the country, I believe; I can only conjure four or five different dialects in my mind when I think of that concept. However, I am sure there are many more.
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