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Tackling Turkish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Hakan D Tetraglot Groupie Turkey Joined 5101 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes  Speaks: Turkish*, Icelandic, English, German Studies: Spanish, Greek, Swedish, Hungarian, Mongolian, Modern Hebrew, Russian | Message 57 of 91 11 December 2010 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Sierra,
You mentioned you would read Orhan Pamuk's books for studying. He's one of the hardest Turkish authors to read probably but if you can make your way through it you'll learn a lot. He's notorious for writing very long sentences (I mean veeeery long). At least notorious for translators! But that means a lot of grammatical structures for you to absorb. I would recommend two books in particular; Kar or Beyaz Kale. The first one refers to the modern Turkish politics and it's very gripping. Beyaz Kale is a rather short one, about a hundred pages and his sentences are much shorter in this book. At this point I would avoid Benim Adım Kırmızı as you will have to learn a lot of words that are not in use and also especially about Nakkaşlık (miniaturism). You've mentioned in your last post about Lang-8. I've checked what it was and I think it's a very nice idea. So probably I'll keep that site in mind for later use. But I'll have to give it a better look. I've seen your entries, didn't go over them but one important thing to mention: As soon as you start telling a story with the phrase "Bir varmış bir yokmuş" then it's done! The narrator all the way through to the end has to use the -miş tense. You can of course write the characters' dialogues within the text in whatever tense you'd like. So just a few sentences: "Bir varmış bir yokmuş, Fransa'da inanılmaz güzel bir kız yaşarmış. Uzun siyah saçlarıyla parlak yeşil gözleri varmış ve kasabadaki her erkek ona aşıkmış. Adı Belle'miş. Belle'in babası çok yaratıcıymış ve zamanını hep küçük evinin arka odasında aletleriyle çalışarak geçirirmiş. Kasabanın sakinleri onun tuhaf olduğunu düşünüp onunla alay ederlermiş." By the way the title "Beauty and the Beast" was translated into Turkish as "Güzel ve çirkin" just a footnote :) Edited by Hakan D on 11 December 2010 at 3:36pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5847 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 58 of 91 12 December 2010 at 8:13am | IP Logged | ||
That's very interesting to see the structure of If-clauses in Turkish. The grammar of the Turkish textsbooks I have studied is not so far advanced yet, but I hope that later on my textbook "Günaydin 2" will present the three different types of If-clauses in Turkish. So Hakan thank you for konjugating the Turkish verb "olmak" here to make this tense clear. "Benim yerimde, senin yerimde,... (= In my place, in your place,...is so very different from my European languages, such a phenomenon is typical for learning Turkish if you have a backgound in Germanic / Romance languages. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 12 December 2010 at 1:35pm 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 59 of 91 13 December 2010 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the tips, Hakan! Corrections noted. I think I'm going to keep the title of
my story and the tenses I'm currently using for the sake of continuity, but I'll be sure to use -miş when I begin with "bir varmiş, bir yokmuş" in the future. :) I've been a bit discouraged with Turkish the last few days, I think largely because I've stopped drawing the majority of my reading material from Twilight/Harry Potter and started reading blogs and other Turkish websites... which seem way, way harder to me. I didn't really think that would be the case, but it's getting me down. Apparently I'm not as prepared for real-world Turkish as I imagined. I think it must be partly because the books I've been working with, Twilight in particular, are somewhat repetitive. I've built up a certain base of vocabulary which is commonly used in young adult narratives but not nearly so often in general articles about, say, health or musings on Turkey's economic future. Another major stumbling block for me is conjunctions, adverbs, and all those little words which are CONSTANTLY used but for which there doesn't seem to be a precise, straightforward translation. There seem to be about a trillion ways to say "although" or "moreover" or "but" or "in addition" or or or or... and I just can't for the life of me keep them straight, never mind use them. Translations for "ancak" for instance range from "simply" to "however" to "on the other hand" to "nevertheless." My strategy for now is just to read as much real-world material as I possibly can, and hopefully watch my comprehension increase day by day. But I'm kinda discouraged right now. :( 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hakan D Tetraglot Groupie Turkey Joined 5101 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: Turkish*, Icelandic, English, German Studies: Spanish, Greek, Swedish, Hungarian, Mongolian, Modern Hebrew, Russian | Message 60 of 91 13 December 2010 at 11:35am | IP Logged | ||
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You shouldn't be discouraged at all because you're doing an EXCELLENT job so far. Apart from that the real world Turkish is as I expect also different than the written texts, many slangs, a lot of small words that can drastically change the meaning of the sentence and so on. But these doesn't mean that you don't know any better Turkish. You'll just have to study them also. I think at this point you're also ready to use the Turkish Language Association turkish-turkish dictionary
http://tdkterim.gov.tr/bts/ There you'll find even explanations, where to use etc. for all those "de", "hani", "acaba", "ki", "ya" and so on. If you follow the below link you'll also find proverbs, idioms, phrases, synonyms any many other dictionaries. http://tdk.org.tr One other thing that might be of help to you is the etymological dictionary of Turkish there you can have a gist of why a word means something, that helps me a lot if I have to learn especially some arabic originated words. http://www.nisanyansozluk.com/ Besides can you tell me which blogs have you been checking so far? 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 61 of 91 14 December 2010 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Hakan saves the day again! Thanks for the links and the encouragement... it was much
needed and greatly appreciated :) I was doing some reading on the Salem witch trials and found a site which seems to have tons of pretty easy articles on random esoteric/supernatural/weird things. I'm not much of a believer in that kind of thing myself, but it can be entertaining to read about. http://www.gizliilimler.tr.gg/Salem-Cad%26%23305;lar%26%2330 5;.htm Blogs I've been reading: http://ozlem-pansiyon.blogspot.com/2010/01/seyahat-bloglar-g ezi-siteleri.html http://acikbilet.travellerspoint.com/ http://mavilimon.blogspot.com/ (personal favorite) http://gundem.blogspot.com/ There are a few others, but these are the main ones. Any other suggestions? I'm open to pretty much any topic- most of the ones I've found are travel blogs, but that's just coincidence. Thanks again for the encouragement, Hakan... I'm off to keep reading about Salem and learning interesting words like "dayak yemek" and "nikâhsız" and "yumurta akı"! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hakan D Tetraglot Groupie Turkey Joined 5101 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: Turkish*, Icelandic, English, German Studies: Spanish, Greek, Swedish, Hungarian, Mongolian, Modern Hebrew, Russian | Message 62 of 91 14 December 2010 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, the first one seems anything but more than every day turkish... Many words that I've never needed to use in my life or you would get once in 5 years maybe.
The others are fine though. If you want to go even more colloquial and see how street turkish is spoken and (often in a sophisticated way) you should check sozluk.sourtimes.org if you haven't heard already. The site is probably the first wikipedia of the internet (but not as organized as wikipedia and in turkish), you can probably find definitions of any word or any incident or any sentence, political views or whatever that pops up to your mind. It grows as wikipedia. It used to be a very good site, however the new inputs are a lot of trash. But you still have the old inputs are still there so just have a check. But beware that some of the users don't use şçığ or other turkish characters often times. (You can do a search at the left hand side button - saying ''hayvan ara'' or ''hayvanlar gibi ara'' - search like animals. That means search crazily, thoroughly or a lot. Therefore you can reckon ''Hayvan(lar) gibi'' means in slang a lot or like crazily) Edited by Hakan D on 14 December 2010 at 8:21pm 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 63 of 91 15 December 2010 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Once again, thanks for the tips! Sozluk.sourtimes.org looks pretty interesting. By "the
first one," do you mean the gizliilimler one or the first blog I listed? In either case, I've spent pretty much all of yesterday and today reading through gizliilimler. I cherry-picked four or five articles about witchcraft (including witchhunting, the Salem trials, and Asatru, which is apparently a resurrection of ancient Nordic beliefs) and now I'm moving on to the history section, starting with a bit about Alexander the Great. This site is just what the doctor ordered- it's so exactly at the level I need for my studying that it's almost as though someone put it together just for me. I don't struggle with it the way I do with a lot of the blogs, but I'm still getting tons of useful vocab. My list from today includes things like otter, harp, bard, nun, leprosy, the Bible, fertility, prophet, and refugee; yesterday, reading about Salem, I got all kinds of useful law words like legal, judge, to stand trial, to prove, and capital punishment. 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 64 of 91 17 December 2010 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm starting to think more seriously about TAC 2011 and how I'm going to approach my
hardcore Turkish studying. I'm a goal-setter but not a goal-reacher; I love making lists but mostly never get around to crossing anything off on them. What does that mean for my TAC? Well, I guess it means that I'm probably going to have a lot of fun planning out my methods in meticulous detail and then have a lot of fun studying Turkish just exactly however I feel like it, without any thought to the finer points of my plans. That's okay, though. I feel like I've come pretty far in Turkish without adhering to any kind of actual methodology whatsoever; as recently as April, I didn't speak a word of the language, and now... well, I don't know exactly where I am, but a heck of a lot further along than I was, that's for sure. My "method" so far has been pretty much: speak when I get the opportunity, read when I feel like it, write when the fancy strikes me, and listen if I have any material handy. Fortunately my obsession with language has meant that I end up doing those things really pretty often, particularly reading. Language learning isn't like going to the gym or reading about political history, where I know it's good for me and I know that if I do it, I'll be glad I did, but still kinda go "ugh, do I have to?" when the time comes... I love studying Turkish, and I love that I love it. It's one of the very few things in my life which are enriching, edifying, healthy, and productive which I also actually really enjoy doing. So here it is, my likely-to-go-ignored-come-January TAC strategy. My TACtics, if you will: First of all, I think I need to focus on listening more than I have been. I just discovered the wonderful turkishlisteninglibrary.com, and I'm going to plan to listen to one thing every day, short or long. As for speaking, I'll ramp up the mumbling and monologuing to work on speed and grammar confidence. One of my biggest failings as a language learner is shyness when it comes to speaking, so I think my goal for the year here will be to be able to Skype with some Turkish friends without blushing scarlet or wanting to sink into a hole. Or, you know, just reverting back to English. I have one friend in particular in mind, who is even more shy with her English than I am with my Turkish- perfecto. Writing: I'd like to be able to write my journal in Turkish by the end of the year. I do this occasionally with Swedish, when I'm writing something particularly personal or embarrassing. A second secrecy option would be lovely. I find it very easy to get lazy about writing, so in the interest of setting realistic goals, I'm going to promise myself to write two things per week: a short entry about anything on lang-8, and a longer retelling of a story or fairy tale (which may well take me a few hours to do and can be spread out over several days). Reading: By the end of the year, I want to have read: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (obstacle: length) The Fellowship of the Ring (obstacle: difficulty and possibly archaic words) Every Turkish book I receive for Christmas... and Turkish books are pretty much all I asked for, so this may be somewhat of a formidable list. As for vocabulary, I've been fantastically good about doing my Mnemosyne reps every morning (little pause while I pat myself on the back) and I'm now up to about 1200 words. I want 5000 by the end of 2011- we'll see how I end up going about this, because already I often have 150+ cards per morning to review. I think I may start to look through my active lists and retire ones which I'm positive I've got down rocksolid. Grammar is my last point of interest. Actually, it's not so much a point of interest as I really loathe studying it actively. Nevertheless, I think some limited direct effort is called for here, and in light of that I'm going to choose one grammatical construction per week and study it until I just can't bear to look at it anymore. It makes sense to work by prevalence, I think, so I'll start with common ones (bypassing the ones I'm already totally comfortable with) and work down from there. 2011: I'm ready! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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