One of the focal points in Greek life is food. Many hours a day are spent either eating or drinking, so to know what I am talking about means I can learn recipes and ask for certain foods at restaurants. Smaragda gave me a list of over a hundred words for fruits, beans, meats, and vegetables, as well as many complete dishes. Being able to navigate the food scene, especially around Christmas, one of the heaviest feasting seasons of the year, will be invaluable.
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This week’s lesson focused on nouns. We discussed the names for the various categories, and talked about the genders and cases. Most importantly, we covered how to tell them apart and interpret them. Some of the endings are the same among different genders, so this involves some rote memorization of endings for some words which defy the regular rules. I just had to pound away at them to memorize, but the entire language can’t just come naturally to me, so I am at peace with that fact. Some of these frustrated me at first, but I became more used to seeing the irregularities and accounting for them, and have made the recognition of case, number, and gender much more naturalized.
I recently went out to dinner at a Greek restaurant with all the Greeks at UR. The meal was a very long, loud affair, without a single word of English during those hours. Smaragda had told me a little about Greek dining before we went, and I thought I was prepared for it then, but I realized I was mistaken. I knew what to eat with the hands and what to use a fork for, what things were communal and which I had to take to my own plate. I knew how to pair foods and sauces, and how to slop pita in salty oil and salad juices just right, but none of these seemed to matter. Despite my trying to fit in, they paid me no attention. It seems that something about Greek food reminds them of home, and puts them back into “Greek mode”. The entire time, the table was just bursting with incredibly loud laughter and unbelievably fast talking. I had hoped to pick up a few words during the course of the evening, but I came away far more confused than before. Included is a picture from the beginning of the meal.GreekonCary.jpg
We flipped the syllabus for days of the week and numbers with the week for accenting rules, since we figured that those would serve me better earlier. These lessons, while simple, can be very useful while I am traveling in Greece, and are part of every language class, so we would not are to overlook them. In Greek, the numbers are easy for me to remember because they are loose cognates with numerical words familiar in English, and the days of the week are easy to remember because most of their names are their number (eg, Monday is “second day”). These two topics pair well because of this, and since bth are useful and fundamental, we put them this early in the course.
The last weeks of class consisted of a fun review with Turkish coffee and Turkish delights provided by our lovely language partner! It was super yummy. Our language partner asked us for any questions we may have, and afterwards all 3 of us students did a compilation on the whiteboard of all the Turkish words we know. We finally took the final exam on the last week, which we were very scared of, but our language partner is a super nice grader so it went fine. I was very proud of myself for actually understanding the passages, questions, etc. on the final and for knowing how to answer them as well. Taking everything in Turkish and answering everything in Turkish made me feel like a real Turkish student. I am so surprised and grateful that I genuinely learned a large chunk of Turkish in only one semester! I can actually understand some parts of Turkish music now and read the Turkish comments. I plan to continue speaking to my awesome Turkish pen pal and jamming out to some Turkish tunes as I always have :) Hopefully I can make my dream of going to Istanbul come true soon as well!
The 10th and 11th weeks of my language learning consisted of learning about family members and how to refer to your own family members and others’ family members. This is where we really had to exercise our knowledge of the possessive conjugation that we learned prior. It was a huge mental exercise for me and definitely took some getting used to. To get used to these concepts, we described a person via their family members, i.e. we figured out someone was a daughter, younger sister, etc. based on their relation to their family members. There are also a lot of family member titles, and for the aunts and uncles there are different names depending on whether the aunt or uncle is on the paternal side of the family or the maternal side. Getting used to the large amount of family words and possessive at the same time was quite a mental stretch for me, but it was very gratifying once I got a hang of it.
The 9th and 8th weeks of my language learning consisted of learning about possessive conjugation, i.e. expressing how someone or something is possessed, if it is mine, his/hers/theirs, his/hers/theirs formal, theirs plural, or ours. This is accomplished by adding a suffix to the end of the word, which delineates who that thing or person belongs to. This suffix must, of course, follow vowel harmony based on the last vowel in the word. This was, for some reason, very hard to catch onto for me! I kept messing it up with all the other suffix conjugations we had learn. We also learned how to say ‘to’ (a/e suffix) (which is something we somewhat learned before, but not explicitly) and ‘from’ (dan/den/tan/ten). These are, of course, picked based on vowel harmony from the last vowel in the word, and in the case of ‘from’ based on the last consonant of the word as well.
The 7th and 8th weeks of my language learning consisted of learning basic verbs and how to conjugate these verbs into the present progressive/gerund form. There are differentiations in how to conjugate a word based on whether the verb root form ends with a vowel or consonant, and which consonant. A buffer vowel is used if the verb root form ends with a vowel rather than a consonant, and the buffer vowel must follow vowel harmony based on the last vowel in the root verb. As with adjectives, there were a lot of verbs! This, time I decided to repeatedly write out a list of verbs to memorize them. Our language partner also taught us how to express frequency, i.e. how frequently a verb was done. Some of these frequency-related phrases and expressions include her zaman (all the time), her gün (every morning), bazen (sometimes), asla (never), and much, much more.
The 5th and 6th weeks of my language learning consisted of learning and reinforcing how to say yes or no questions, and a lot, lot of adjectives. The construction of yes or no questions, put in very simple terms, is the adding of either mı, mi, mu, mü at the end of a sentence. The correct ending is chosen based on vowel harmony. When asking if something is there, the word “var” is added before the question suffix; when asking if something is not there, the word “yok” is added before the question suffix. Due to the large amount of adjectives our language professor introduced us to, I made another Quizlet specifically for some of the most common adjectives (https://quizlet.com/331105251/turkish-unit-2-adjectives-flash-cards/). I would like to think that I am çalışkan (hardworking), but I am definitely tembel (lazy) in all reality. We also reinforced our learning of numbers, learning how to ask how much something costs in Turkish - “Bu kaç lira/para?” (How much Turkish Lira/money is this?)
The 3rd and 4th weeks of my language learning consisted of learning basic vocabulary and how to refer to the things around you, such as ‘this’, ‘that’, and ‘that over there’, which is ‘bu’, ‘şu’, and ‘o’ respectively. Our language professor had us create vocabulary lists of some basic words, but I accidentally went a little too far and made a Quizlet with 221 terms (https://quizlet.com/318723144/turkish-unit-1-vocabulary-flash-cards/). I was not paying attention when she said “some.” The vocabulary I learned and compiled consisted of basic nouns such as common locations, items, foods, professions, animals, etc. A lot of these basic verbs borrowed or had influence from Arabic, Persian, and English, so I found that influence to be helpful in learning the words. I also learned about asking where someone or something is located, which is “Nerede?”, along with how to say where someone or something is with the location words we learned. We also started learning numbers in Turkish.
The first two weeks of my Turkish language learning consisted of easing myself into Turkish. Our language professor gave us many cool videos going over summaries of the Turkish language and the state of modern Turkey. Turkish and its derivative languages are spoken in so many places! Turkish also has heavy influences on the other languages around it, such as Persian and Arabic, and these languages have also had a large influence on Turkish as well. It was interesting seeing the history of a country and its surrounding regions being present in its language. I also learned about some important introductory Turkish logistics, such as greetings in Turkish, how to introduce myself in Turkish, the Turkish alphabet, and the concept of vowel harmony. Vowel harmony did not make sense to me when I first learned about it at the beginning, but once I started using it in several different grammatical mechanisms in later weeks, it made perfect sense to me.
Although it is usually ill-advised to cast a generalization over an entire country, I do believe that I can say that Greeks largely communicate with very high context. As we learn some vocabulary, I notice that sometimes the same word can mean very different things, based on the placement of the stress. I wonder if this tends to happen more in languages from high-context cultures. In any event, there seem to be a number of things which I must be careful about saying, and Smaragda often advises that I avoid phrasing something with a particular word, because “it has other, negative connotations.” I will really have to watch my tongue in Greece, because I might end up in a fight trying to wish someone a good morning. I really hope that people I meet will have mercy on me and understand my struggle. Of course, fighting is not very well regarded in Greek culture, but roasting is, so I will probably be opening myself up to some amount of ridicule during my visit.
Although it is usually ill-advised to cast a generalization over an entire country, I do believe that I can say that Greeks largely communicate with very high context. As we learn some vocabulary, I notice that sometimes the same word can mean very different things, based on the placement of the stress. I wonder if this tends to happen more in languages from high-context cultures. In any event, there seem to be a number of things which I must be careful about saying, and Smaragda often advises that I avoid phrasing something with a particular word, because “it has other, negative connotations.” I will really have to watch my tongue in Greece, because I might end up in a fight trying to wish someone a good morning. I really hope that people I meet will have mercy on me and understand my struggle. Of course, fighting is not very well regarded in Greek culture, but roasting is, so I will probably be opening myself up to some amount of ridicule during my visit.
I've always wondered how widely Christmas is celebrated in South Korea since Christianity is not the dominant religion, but still holds a part of their population. In 2015, about 20% are Protestant and 7% Catholic making up under a third of their population. Almost 60% have declared that they affiliate with no religion despite the official religion being Buddhist. Yet regardless of which religion practiced, most Koreans practice Confucian beliefs and morals in their daily lives.
Christmas has been declared a national holiday unlike other East Asian countries, but it is celebrated quite differently from the US. While there are decorations in big cities and major businesses, the emphasis is not on gifts an a lot of decorations that start in November as it does in the US. It is focused more on the religious background of the holiday, so many Christian families will go to church services and young groups will go caroling. Santa is an symbol for Christmas there as well, but he is known as Grandpa Santa or Santa harabeoji 할아버지 which ties to the Confucian moral of family. Santa is regarded as a family member who is caring for his children and can wear either a red or blue suit representing the two national colors of South Korea.
For food, it is popular to go out to a restaurant or a Christmas buffet. It is also common for couples or groups of friends to celebrate this holiday together and then spend New Year's with their families, which is usually switched in the US. Usually one gift is given to each person instead of piles of presents. Although it is widely recognized and celebrated in South Korea, you can see the Confucian values playing a role as well.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ks.html ;
Turkish Syntax
This semester I have been taking an introduction to syntax class and one of the topics we covered is head position in phrase structures (as a side note: I almost certainly am using some of the terminology wrong here). English is a (generally) head-initial language. Essentially, in English, phrases tend to follow a structure with a head followed by its complement. Prepositional phrases are just that, prepositional, with the head (a preposition) before the rest of the phrase. Similarly, in verb phrases verbs precede their complements (i.e. grammatical objects). This compares with Turkish which is head-final (at least in the cases that I know of). Turkish lacks prepositions, but certain noun cases and suffixes act similarly to prepositions and provide the same information that would be given in English through prepositions, thus making the suffixes postpositions since they follow the noun phrase. Similarly, the order of verbs and objects are flipped with Turkish having a SOV word order (compared with English’s SVO word order). Since my knowledge of syntax is not particularly deep, nor is my knowledge of Turkish, I wish I could explore this further, but I think Turkish’s head-final nature and knowing how this compares with English and others languages I’ve studied will be an important piece of information to have in the future and will be helpful for categorizing and explaining bits of Turkish grammar.
Turkish Syntax
This semester I have been taking an introduction to syntax class and one of the topics we covered is head position in phrase structures (as a side note: I almost certainly am using some of the terminology wrong here). English is a (generally) head-initial language. Essentially, in English, phrases tend to follow a structure with a head followed by its complement. Prepositional phrases are just that, prepositional, with the head (a preposition) before the rest of the phrase. Similarly, in verb phrases verbs precede their complements (i.e. grammatical objects). This compares with Turkish which is head-final (at least in the cases that I know of). Turkish lacks prepositions, but certain noun cases and suffixes act similarly to prepositions and provide the same information that would be given in English through prepositions, thus making the suffixes postpositions since they follow the noun phrase. Similarly, the order of verbs and objects are flipped with Turkish having a SOV word order (compared with English’s SVO word order). Since my knowledge of syntax is not particularly deep, nor is my knowledge of Turkish, I wish I could explore this further, but I think Turkish’s head-final nature and knowing how this compares with English and others languages I’ve studied will be an important piece of information to have in the future and will be helpful for categorizing and explaining bits of Turkish grammar.
Turks outside of Turkey
Due to a long history of migration and resettlement, there are more than a few non-Turkish Turks, i.e. ethnic Turks, speaking Turkish and with Turkish cultural practices, but no formal legal connection to the Turkish Republic, living outside of Turkey. These communities exist all over the middle east and eastern Europe in the former territory of the Ottoman Empire, but many of them have shrunk as a result of migration to Turkey or to other countries. In much of eastern Europe, in particular Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, and Kosovo, large Turkish communities exist and have some legal rights to study and use their own language, but local discrimination and long standing ethnic tensions do exist, especially in Greece which does not recognize the existence of a large part of its Turkish community. In the Levant, Iraq has a large Turkish minority, approximately 3 million people (out of 35 million total Iraqis), who are called Iraqi Turkmen (note: Turkmen in this case is the term used to describe Turks living in Arab countries; Turkmen is also the name of an ethnic group living in Turkmenistan. They’re all Turkic peoples). Syria likewise has between several hundred thousand to three million Syrian Turkmen (the Syrian Civil War has made accurate counting difficult and there is limited data beforehand) Both of these populations were and are heavily oppressed by the respective Ba’athist regimes in their countries, including being banned from using or teaching Turkish, so many speak Arabic as a first or second language. North Africa (excluding Morocco) has a large population of Turkish descent, but it’s difficult to ascertain accurate numbers so estimates range from several hundred thousand to up to a quarter of the population of each country depending on who is doing the estimates. In all of these cases, identifying someone as Turkish is a political statement. It builds a direct tie between the Turkish Republic and these communities which can be regarded with suspicion or repression by the other governments or communities in the region, and while the Turkish Republic is politically distinct from the Ottoman Empire, there’s an undertone of its former control and legacy that’s present. Wars and political conflicts make it difficult to get accurate figures on the Turkish population outside of Turkey as well as information on their cultural identity and practices.
Secularism in Turkey
In 1923 with the establishment of the Turkish Republic and under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey rapidly transitioned in both politics and identity. One of the guiding sets of principles is the altı ok (six arrows), which refer to Republicanism (cumhuriyetçilik), Populism (halkçılık), Nationalism (milliyetçilik), Secularism (laiklik), Statism (devletçilik), and Reformism (devrimcilik). To the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly not that great) these concepts are invoked in a manner similar to how “liberty” or “democracy” or “American values” are talked about in an American political context, while they do have specific, narrow definitions, they have an almost emotional appeal and their meaning changes significantly depending on who’s speaking and to whom. The one that I want to talk about most here is secularism, laiklik (the Turkish word originating from French, laïque, cognate with lay or layman in English in contrast with clergy). Early Turkish Republican secularism was highly reactive to Islam and a lot of reforms were made to separate Islam from public life and secondarily to Turkicize Islam, even going so far as to have Turkish used rather than Arabic in many religious contexts (e.g. the call to prayer). This was not particularly well received and much of the Turkicization was reversed in 1950. Secularism and the separation of Islam from public life has a much more complex legacy with a myriad of individual opinions on it. In conversations I’ve had with people and some of the media I’ve seen online, feelings are mixed about secularism with some considering it an essential part of being Turkish and other considering it, well, the opposite and that Turkey should cease to be a secular country. Erdoğan is currently desecularizing much of the country according to a lot of American analyses [to be clear, I do not know how he is perceived in Turkey]. In the future, it will be interesting to see how secularism continues to change and develop in its role in Turkish governance and public life.
For my final cultural post, I would like to talk about dating/marriage culture in India.
Historically, India relied on an arranged marriage system, where the parents would choose a suitable spouse for their child. This was usually done when their son/daughter was an adult, but there are instances of younger teens being promised for the future.
Currently, the arranged system is still used, but other systems are gaining recognition. One is the "love marriage" system, which is what Westerners consider "normal", and the other is matrimony websites. Love marriage simply means that the couple chose each other based on shared love, instead of based on their parents' recommendations or societal/economic pressure. When I go to India and walk with my fiancé, even then people in public will ask "love-relationship?". Matrimony websites are similar to dating websites, except the goal is marriage! Each candidate enters all pertinent information about themselves (height, weight, age, income, religion, language, etc.) and wait for a "matrimony match"! When they get matched with someone, it doesn't mean they are required to get married, of course. It simply means that they are alerted to a potentially good partner for marriage.
A funny story is that the very evening before my now-fiancé told me he liked me, he had a phone call with a matrimony match. He said she was "not repelling" but he didn't seem too excited. The next day I believe he called her back and called off the match. :)
