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Tackling Turkish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| onurdolar Diglot Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4652 days ago 98 posts - 147 votes  Speaks: Turkish*, English Studies: Italian, German | Message 81 of 91 18 May 2012 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Edited by onurdolar on 18 May 2012 at 8:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 82 of 91 19 January 2015 at 2:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh my... two and a half years later, here I am again. The love affair with Turkish doesn't
end, although the studying apparently does (for embarrassingly long periods of time). Anyway, I'm back in the States, but I'm going back to Turkey semi-permanently this summer and I'm making a serious effort to shore up my Turkish skills before I get there. My current routine consists mainly of the following: -listening, in the form of movies (both Turkish and dubbed) and news radio. -Anki reps, although I badly need to increase my word bank on there. -writing, both to a language partner via email nearly daily and on Lang-8. I think my biggest breakthrough so far is that I feel significantly less... well, less bothered by the prospect of making mistakes. For that reason alone I feel much more comfortable writing, and it seems like each email or Lang-8 entry I write takes me less and less time. I'm looking up a lot of words, but a good portion of them turn out to be "darn, I knew that one" words and I'm hoping my dictionary use will be in sharp decline soon. My sentences are definitely getting much longer (though whether or not they're more grammatical is a bit debatable) and I feel increasingly comfortable with Turkish word order and the "Turkish" way of saying things. Listening is a real mixed bag. Some things leave me thinking "awesome, I understood basically everything! I'm awesome at this!" while others that I thought were more or less the same level totally bewilder me. I haven't had much motivation for reading recently. I think what I really want is a set of fun, casual blogs to read. I've definitely done some searching but haven't yet succeeded in finding any that really hold my interest. Happy studying everyone! It's good to be back. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 83 of 91 19 January 2015 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I made a great discovery last night: a fan fiction website in Turkish! I'm not a big fan
fiction reader generally, but this is perfect for bridging the gap between too formal for me (news) and too informal for me (Turkish forums, which by and large seem to contain extremely colloquial Turkish which is difficult for me to understand). I came across a construction I don't fully understand: "...aklına geldikçe bir sonraki hediyeyi düşünür olmuştu." I get the gist of the sentence (she's thinking about the next gift she's going to get for someone). The construction I would have expected is "düşünmeye başladı." Would that also be appropriate? Can anyone help me out with why it's düşünür olmuştu here and when to use that form? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fireballtrouble Triglot Senior Member Turkey Joined 4524 days ago 129 posts - 203 votes Speaks: Turkish*, French, English Studies: German | Message 84 of 91 19 January 2015 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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when you say "düşünmeye başladı", it means , from the known point of time and on, she
started to think. So, this construction refers to "action of thinking".. But when you say "düşünür olmuştu". it's more likely a construction about "description of a state". The person who says "..düşünür olmuştu" thinks that the doer nowadays thinks about this gift etc. 1- Artık bana hiç yazmaz oldu. .. He/she doesn't write to me anymore. 2- Artık bana hiç yazmıyor. .. He/she doesn't write to me anymore. In fact 1 and 2 mean the same think for a IndoEuropean language native speaker. But a Turk or a Turkic language native feels a nuance between these two, i.e., 2 simply explains a lack of action. He doesn't write anymore, he stopped it.. But 1 even sounds like complaining about the situation. "-maz/mez olmak" "-r olmak" means that the action of lack of action is becoming a habit, a situation. Logically we have tips for these two keywords : situation ==>refers to "olmak" and becoming a habit ==> -r -mez -maz Simple Present tense, or Turkish Geniş Zaman Edited by fireballtrouble on 19 January 2015 at 6:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 85 of 91 20 January 2015 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for that explanation, fireballtrouble! I think I understand now.
So if I say, for example "filmleri seyretmez oldum" I'm implying that I used to watch movies but now I've fallen into a habit of not watching them. Some cursory Googling suggests that I shouldn't conjugate "seyretmez" for person but only the last verb (oldum). On a very related note, I wonder if anyone has suggestions for intermediate-advanced Turkish grammar books? I definitely need to review basic grammar as well after such a long absence from studying, but I'm coming to realize that there are a number of constructions I've never been formally introduced to, and I think I could really benefit from that. Something like the Perfect Your ________ series from Teach Yourself would be awesome if only they had one for Turkish. I think I'm currently leaning toward Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar by Göksel and Kerslake in the Routledge Comprehensive Grammars series, but I'm a little hesitant to drop $70 on something without a sound recommendation. Edited by Sierra on 20 January 2015 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 86 of 91 20 January 2015 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found another cool thing last night! There's a vlog-type channel on YouTube called
Merlin'e Sorun where a group of gamers answers questions about games and related things (computer hardware, consoles) sent in by fans. I'm not understanding as much as I'd like to be, but I think I mainly chalk that up to speed at this point, which I guess is somewhat comforting: it's not that I don't know enough Turkish, it's just that I need to listen more and get my brain working faster on the Turkish I already do know. I'd love to find some more vlogs like this. I'm a gamer in a limited sense- I love Diablo 3- but I think a more personal or general channel would hold my interest for longer. I came to the unhappy conclusion that I probably need to do some shadowing. Everyone has their study methods they prefer (I really like SRS, for instance, while I see a lot of people struggling with finding it boring) and shadowing, although I've never tried it, really does not appeal to me. Another hurdle, I think, is that while there's a fair wealth of materials for Turkish out there, I'm not so certain about the availability of materials I'm actually interested in. I definitely need to do something about my pronunciation, though. I don't think it's dismal (or totally unintelligible) but it's bad enough that I'm a bit embarrassed of it and it's that, rather than the possibility of stumbling or making grammatical mistakes, that's really holding me back from speaking. One final thought for this morning: I've decided to tackle, say, a page at a time of whatever I happen to be reading by writing down every grammatical construction I don't understand. I think doing this and then analyzing it for patterns afterwards will really help me identify what I don't know yet. There are a lot of constructions I passively understand based on context but could never in a million years come up with myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fireballtrouble Triglot Senior Member Turkey Joined 4524 days ago 129 posts - 203 votes Speaks: Turkish*, French, English Studies: German | Message 87 of 91 20 January 2015 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes it has exactly this meaning. You can build the sentence as affirmative or negative form, depending on settlement of a habit of action or lack of action. filmeleri seyretmez oldum . (i used to watch, but i don't know why, i realize that I don't watch anymore) conjugated verb + conjugated olmak is the key form. This grammatical form can be considered as an observation of a state, that's why I described it as settlement of a habitual state. Because speaker isn't simply decribing the action, he says his observation about the situation. And honestly, hats off for your Turkish, seeing that you cope with such grammatical structures, it means you have solid knowledge. -- X-Y-Z.. X and Y flirt and talk on the phone more and more often, and X tells this story to her friend Z : X says : Y ile hergün telefonda konuşuyoruz. (Y and I we are talking on the phone everyday.) X says : Y ile hergün telefonda konuşur olduk. (Hey Z, you know what, I have found myself talking to him on the phone almost everyday, maybe i'm up to him too) -- Bu sıralar annemi ziyaret etmiyorum. (nowadays I don't pay mum a visit) Bu sıralar annemi ziyaret edemiyorum. (I have lots of things to do, children, family, i neglect her) Bu sıralar annemi ziyaret etmez oldum. (What's wrong with me, I don't visit her anymore, I've changed recently..) --- just two more scenarios, in order to make thing more comprehensible, or incomprehensible :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 88 of 91 20 January 2015 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks! That's super helpful, and I appreciate your taking the time to explain this to me.
It's funny actually that this construction seems to mean basically the same thing as the English "I found myself doing xyz" (which I saw that you used in one of the translations you gave) because I was just thinking the other day that I vastly overuse that in English, haha. Now I can overuse it in another language too! So far today I've written a short email to my language exchange partner and then listened to maybe an hour or so of Turkish news radio. I understood a lot of a story on whether or not the Turkish people trust their police force, but much, much less of a story about some kind of election. Ohhh well, practice practice. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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