- Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language.
I personally do not think the history of any language has helped me in learning the languages that I am fluent in, therefore I do not think history will help me learning Turkish either. However, I find it increasingly important to have some knowledge of where the origins of the language are. I know the modern Turkish has gone through numerous changes, so it is not anything like what it was years ago. It has had the influence of Arabic, French, German, Armenian and other languages that people have interacted with. My language partner said Turkish has lots of French words since it used to be considered elegant and high-class thing to use French words in communication, so those words eventually became everyday words(gillete-razor), for instance, would be one example. Arabic culture has also greatly influenced Turkey, so there are some Arabic words in the language too. In authentic Turkish words, consonant always follows a vowel or vice versa, so if a word has two consonants next to each other, there is a high likelihood that it is not authentic Turkish word. History of the language, thus, has helped me understand some linguistic features of Turkish, which I find very helpful, but I do not give the history as much importance as I give to the current day language itself.
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