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Bootstrapping Turkish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5123 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 1 of 54 01 March 2014 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
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I actually wanted to make a reference in my log title to Münchhausen, who famously pulled himself out of a swamp by his own hair, but then I wasn't sure how well known his writings are outside of the German speaking countries. Münchhausen actually fought against the Turks in the Austro-Russian-Turkish war of 1735-39, however, the intent of my foray into Turkey is of course not war but rather linguistic curiosity.
I'm typing this post in an internet cafe in Ankara, and I must admit the Turkish keyboard is driving me crazy. The i is an ı, but be careful with capital I lest it comes out as İ, and punctuation marks are not where I expect them to be. I guess I have to learn yet another keyboard layout... I've decided to try myself at Turkish. I have long wanted to learn this language for a variety of reasons, but for the moment it shall be enough to mention the fact that there are very strong Turkish minorities in both Germany, where I was born, and Switzerland, where I live, food, and Central Asia. I've started a new log for Turkish for two reasons: firstly, this is a language learning experiment which may turn out to deserve its own thread, and secondly, it will be easier to abandon this project should I loose interest (or fail). Now what makes this an experiment? As some here who have interacted with me a bit will already know I'm firmly in the 'no translation - no grammar' camp. I have made the experience that translation and explicit grammar study are counter-productive in the sense that they lead to all kinds of problems later on concerning my ability to use vocabulary and grammar appropriately and with ease. It seems that those techniques keep me trapped in the semantic categories of my mother tongue and slow me down when it comes to producing grammatically correct sentences. As always, your mileage may vary; I appreciate that. This endeavor is an experiment because I will try to bootstrap myself out of the swamp of ignorance using only Turkish. I specifically have two principles: 1. No translation 2. No grammar study There is a third principle - listening proficiency before starting to read - which I won't be applying to Turkish. It served me well when I learned Thai, but it's expensive in terms of time and money (working with tutors is a must). I aspire to higher pronunciation and speaking skills in Thai than in Turkish, but I also believe that Turkish - not being tonal - is easier for a native speaker of German to pronounce. I should point out that I will apply those two principles only during the beginner and intermediate stages. I want to avoid using translation and grammar analysis in the acquisition process. Once I have a solid grasp of the language, translation and grammar analysis seem to be useful tools to advance. I do enjoy linguistics. I should also mention that I will of course sometimes conceptualize Turkish words, expressions and sentences in terms of other languages (mostly my mother tongue, of course). 'No translation' doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to think anything in German when doing Turkish. But there is a huge difference between expressing a guess what something means in my mother tongue and using a dictionary. My brain treats dictionary entries as definitions, producing strong links back to German, whereas guesses are more ephemeral in nature. Often, those guesses are 'mental pictures' anyway, and no second language is needed. Ok, so what do I know about Turkish? Very little. I can count to 19, I know words for hello, please, thanks, water, bread, sea, bye, and Turkey, and I know that Turkish is agglutinative (and I know what that means). That's it. I'm basically starting from zero. Wish me luck :) Edited by Bakunin on 03 March 2014 at 7:02pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5123 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 2 of 54 01 March 2014 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
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Those first steps will be the most difficult. Unlike proper bootstrapping, I will have to rely on context to acquire the basics. Since I don't know any Turkish, context means pictures and my adult knowledge of the world. I've scoured Ankara's bookstores for children's books easy enough to be comprehensible even to me. And I found stuff, who would have thought?
So what do I have? A. About 30 books on animals, the world and technology, 30 pages each with lots of pictures and 3-5 sentences per page B. A few encyclopedias for kids with lots of pictures and a bit more text. C. The little prince as a reference. Note: I'll post pictures and some more details when I'm back home. A picture says more than 1000 words. A will get me started. I hope to reach a level sufficient for diving into B. After B, C shouldn't be completely over my head anymore. Once I'm past the little prince, the world is my oyster. That's my plan of action. I will also listen to Turkish media, just to get used to the sounds, and then expand from there. I've already completed the first of those A books, the one on bears. Basically, I just moved my eyes across the lines of text and looked at the pictures. Nevertheless, I figured out enough to get me all excited, rush to an internet cafe, and start this log. Here are some of the things I think I understand: - there are three types of bears: kutup ayılar, boz ayılar and pandalar - I think I understand (in context) words for mother, to eat, to live, cold, warm, to swim, seal, paw, cave, and a few more - I think I understood two complete sentences: Kutup ayıları çok soğuk yerlerde yaşarlar; and Kutup ayıları çok iyi yüzerler. I won't make it a regular to report on words I (think I) understand, see my 'no translation' principle, but I thought this very first encounter is easier to appreciate with concrete examples. I'm sure I will find ways to write about my progress without discussing too many individual words. If you look at my word list and think, gosh, seal, paw, cave, that's a bunch of useless words for a beginner, I beg to differ. Any set of words can serve as a bridgehead into a new language. Those words are meaningful to me, because I'm reading a picture book on bears. I like animals, geography, technology, science etc., so most of the stuff I've bought and will be reading is of interest to me. I'm sure I will encounter those words very soon again, and they will help me to learn other words around them. Edited by Bakunin on 03 March 2014 at 7:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4861 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 3 of 54 01 March 2014 at 7:35pm | IP Logged |
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Looks like you figured out a lot by reading that one book! I'm currently reading some children's books aimed at 3-5 year olds in Persian and I don't think I get quite as much out of them without translation as you do. But I could be wrong - I may not appreciate how much I can start to categorise in some way and my brain may simply be more complacent because I look up what I don't understand.
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| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5123 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 4 of 54 03 March 2014 at 9:12pm | IP Logged |
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@druckfehler: Thanks for stopping by, it's always nice to see you around :) I'm not sure whether the children's books I'm reading are the same as you are - see below for a detailed description of what I'm doing. Or it really is some weird complacency effect. Care to post a picture of the book you're reading in your log?
Now that I'm back from Ankara, I can upload a few pictures of the materials which I hope will carry me through to basic reading fluency. Ankara, by the way, is not a must-see city in Turkey, I'd say. There's little in terms of sights, and unfortunately the famous Museum of Anatolian Civilizations was undergoing renovation. But people are friendly, coffee shops abound, and the food is delicious. Z. Yep, I found something even more basic than A, let's call it Z. There are picture books aimed at pre-school children having just pictures and Turkish words. Here's an example: 
I've got three books of the series 'Okul öncesi eğitimi resimli kitaplar serisi - Pre-school picture book series', covering: - book 2: food, professions, sport, household objects, about 300 pictures - book 4: words, mostly objects encountered in every-day life, sorted alphabetically, about 300 pictures, and - book 5: transport, clothes, body parts, planets, famous sights around the world, reptiles and birds, about 280 pictures (but the reptile and bird section is overly detailed and useless to me). Then I've got 'Eğlenceli Çıkartmalarla Resimili Dünya Atlası', a picture book on geography covering all continents, geographical features, animals, people and historical or cultural achievements (Brandenburg gate, Trans-Siberian Railway, Petronas towers etc.). Furthermore, I have three small picture books with only 20-50 pictures each, covering furniture, colors (exemplified with about 7 objects each), and some random objects. Finally, I've got four books of the 'İlk Öğrendiklerim dizisi' series with 14 pages each, covering: - book 1: adjectives (full - empty, young - old, etc.) - book 3: shapes - book 7: food, and - book 8: seasons. I'm not going to attempt to learn those words explicitly, the only thing I will be doing is browsing these books from time to time, looking at the pictures and reading the words. I'm sure when reading other books I will occasionally be able to refer back, checking up on specific words, since my memory for pictures is much better than for strange new Turkish words. A. I've got 29 books of the 'Tübitak Popüler Bilim Kıtapları' series, originally published by Usborne. Each book has about 30 pages with only a few sentences per page. Here's an example page on polar bears hunting for seals: 
Two more pages on iceberg formation: 
I've got books on: dangerous animals, volcanos, elephants, Antarctica, penguins, bears, geology, sharks, earthquakes and tsunamis, horses, trees, eggs, lions, the solar system, the universe, dinosaurs, apes, dogs, trash and recycling, storms, nutrition, trains, reptiles, insects, spiders, weather, archeology, goats, and plants. I've started reading. I don't understand most sentences, but I'm usually able to pick up a few words. Mostly nouns, at this stage, but I've figured out a few verbs and adjectives as well. At the moment, I see myself cycling through the books a few times, hopefully getting to a point where I can make sense of most sentences (as opposed to hardly any right now). B. It'll take a while until I reach that stage, but I've bought the books anyway: children's encyclopedias. I've got one on animals, here's an example page: 
Sorry for the bad quality, by the way. Even better, however, is a more comprehensive encyclopedia, covering geography, plants, animals, dinosaurs (they always have to include dinosaurs, don't they?), people, history, human body, science, space, and technology. Here's an example page on houses: 
On the side, I've got about ten much shorter books of a similar style covering only one specific topic each, e.g., technology, ancient civilizations, or the oceans. I bought them to have some variation; sometimes, it helps to have different descriptions or explanations of the same thing. The underlying principle of my approach is 'comprehensible input'. At stages Z and A, I'll be relying mostly on pictures. At stage B, my adult knowledge of the world and how things work will fill in most gaps. At least that's what I hope. EDIT: I spent a bit less than CHF 150 on all of those books, just in case anybody is wondering how much I've been shelling out. Edited by Bakunin on 04 March 2014 at 6:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4625 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 5 of 54 03 March 2014 at 10:49pm | IP Logged |
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Haha, impressive as always! Looking forward to seeing your progress! Although it's a bit
different from the approach you took with Thai, it indeed looks quite similar (apart the listening part) and I had been wondering what troubles and worries you might come across with this method. I guess, now is time to get to know that! (Although I believe, it'll be a piece of cake for you :p) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4795 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 54 03 March 2014 at 11:53pm | IP Logged |
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You have another new follower here.
I'm very interesting in hearing how this method will work out. I'd be a little bit cautious of spending time now of the more obscure subjects- dogs, trees, eggs, trash, storms, nutrition, insects, weather and plants seem the most relevant for adult conversation. Other things that might be in the encyclopedia are family, health, education/going to school/ work, Turkey's geography, I know nothing more about the language than 'merhaba' so I shall be using your posts to educate myself. Thanks for posting the pictures of your books, too. I hadn't considered a child's encyclopedia but that might be a fun option for after reaching my b1 goal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4351 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 7 of 54 04 March 2014 at 8:31am | IP Logged |
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This is already an interesting log. I'll also be following with interest, and maybe steal some tips. Good luck with turkish!
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| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5123 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 8 of 54 06 March 2014 at 7:00pm | IP Logged |
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@yuhakko: Yes, it's a bit different, isn't it? Not sure if I do my pronunciation a favor going for the written word so early and almost exclusively, but we'll see. And then, Turkish is just so 'easy' to pronounce compared to Thai… I didn't investigate to back it up, but I wouldn't be surprised if the sound inventory is pretty close to German, something that can't be said at all for Thai. I'll try to report honestly on my troubles and worries. I'm not sure about it being a piece of cake, though :)
@yantai_scot: Thanks :) I'm also interested to see how it works out :)) Speaking, by the way, is the least of my worries at this point in time. I wouldn't mind if I started to speak only 'years' from now. I'd like to develop a high level of comprehension first, and then take it from there. But I can see me picking up a few phrases here and there to use with Turkish colleagues and people in town. So, given that I'm totally relaxed about speaking, I don't have an issue with learning about 'obscure' stuff (well, nothing of the stuff I bought is really obscure, but I know what you mean) if it helps me to get a foot in the door. Regarding encyclopedias, unfortunately I haven't found Turkish ones. They're all translations from English and aimed at an international audience. I'll have to learn about Turkey from other sources later on. @renaissancemedi: Thanks! I know that your Turkish has already progressed well, so it'll be rather me turning to you and stealing some tips once I'm over the initial hump :) ----------------------- Ok, so what's happened? I have to say it's super-exciting to take up a new language, even though I totally suck at it. I'm now only a few days into this endeavor, not even a week, so obviously I can't report much progress, but since I'm doing something a tad unusual (see my first post), I'll try to share my observations on a regular basis. First of all, I've noticed a few grammar points right away. Turkish is SOV, it's all rather post- than pre-, and it sure is agglutinative - I've seen monsters of words even in the most basic of sentences. I think I understand a few endings already. I'm not going to spend too much time thinking about/analyzing that stuff, I just want to comprehend. I'll reserve the thinking for later. In any case, it aids comprehension a lot if I know what's a verb, what's a noun, what's an adjective etc., and I often have a hunch which is what even if I don't understand the sentence at all. Next, my approach requires a high tolerance for not getting it. I just don't get it most of the time. I don't understand the vast majority of sentences; I probably fully understand less than 5% of all sentences I read. But on most pages I understand words, and they're getting more and more every day. It's often pretty easy to figure out key nouns, but it's more difficult with adjectives and verbs. The dominant feature, however, of this stage is that I don't really understand much. I'm actually fine with that, because I just move on and get excited and happy about the stuff that I do understand. But I can see how some people would be frustrated using this approach. I've started taking note of sentences I fully or almost fully understand when I'm at my desk (otherwise, I just let go). I put them in an Excel sheet. It looks like this: 
For most of the sentences I can recall the picture and then make sense of the sentence even out of the context of the book. The idea is to build up a repertoire of example sentences I (mostly) understand. As I'm collecting more and more sentences, I get more and more examples for the same words, which is interesting to browse through. I find that typing the sentence already helps to focus and aids recall. It is an ugly crutch, I admit that, and I hope to be able to throw it away soon, but it's something that seems to make sense right now. I also started Anki-ing my super-basic picture books. I do 'picture - Turkish word' cards. Colors, household articles, food, animals, that kind of stuff. Since this involves active recall, I'm a bit concerned that it'll be too difficult, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. I've just started yesterday so can't really comment yet. I'll get back to Anki in a later post, I'm sure. Since about yesterday, I've noticed that I've started to recognize words I don't understand yet. In the beginning, every word looked alien, but now some are beginning to stand out, even though I haven't the slightest idea what they might mean. That's a good thing, it means that my brain is busy organizing the stuff I see. And just for the record: I listen about 5-10 minutes per day to the press revue of Deutsche Welle in Turkish. There's a lot of Putin, Merkel and Obama in it, but of course I don't understand anything. I focus on the sounds and the occasional word I do get. I'm pretty sure I'm in the process of figuring out the word for president, and I've recognized a few cognates from Indo-European languages. Edited by Bakunin on 06 March 2014 at 7:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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