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Bootstrapping Turkish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5135 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 17 of 54 28 March 2014 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
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Turkish rocks! I’m so glad I started learning this language :) When reading my science books for 7-year olds, I really enjoy figuring out new words, it resembles play much more than study - and that’s just how I like my language learning!
I forgot to mention last week that I started reading one of the children’s encyclopedias I bought, the one on animals; a picture can be found in my 4th message, it’s the first picture in category B. I read this book on my way to work, and I usually manage to get through two or three animals per commute (ten minutes). There’s more text and fewer pictures, but I find myself recognizing many words now. Often not enough to make sense of full sentences, but enough to make me happy. Most of my time is spent, however, on those category A science books with many pictures and few sentences I’ve posted about a lot already. It’s amazing how much progress I’ve made within a few weeks. There have now even been some pages which I think I fully understand (always evaluated against my fairly loose definition of ‘understand’). There are also pages where I don’t understand a single sentence, but they are few and far between. I guess I understand now more than half of the sentences on average, and I’m picking up new words at an astounding rate. I know from experience that I don’t have any particular talent for languages, it’s simply the magic of comprehensible input. Now that I have TRmorph, I’m a bit more liberal as to which sentences I add to my corpus. I use the search functionality a lot to remind myself of words I know I’ve seen before. This often helps me to puzzle out more stuff. I’m getting a pretty good handle on certain noun endings, but verbs are still a complete and utter mystery. I’m still listening to Deutsche Welle’s press review. I slowly start to recognize real Turkish words, like ‘today’, ‘later’, ‘said’ etc. I have the impression that I’m also getting better at recognizing word boundaries. At the beginning, it was just one stream of sounds, but now I’m starting to hear individual words (even though I don’t understand them). But since I don’t really get anything out of these podcasts, I tend to listen only a few minutes per day. Now that I seem to be fully sold on studying Turkish, I’ve decided to apply a method I’ve already used in my early Thai days: working with Wimmelbücher. There are thousands of Turks in my city and I’ve already found someone who’s keen on working with me - we’ll start Saturday in a week. Here’s what I’ll be doing (and I know it works, I’ve done many such hours with my Thai tutor at the early stages of my Thai studies): I’ll be meeting with my tutor in a quiet place for one or two hours, we will look at a page of a Wimmelbuch, and she will explain in great detail what we see in the picture. There will be enough pointing so that I always know where we are, and I will also record the session to be able to repeat it later at home. I will just listen and look at the pictures. That’s all. No speaking, no translations, no language analysis. The idea is to absorb vocabulary, sentence structures, prosody etc. in a pretty natural way. What I like most about this method is that it leads to very natural, repetitive language use on part of the ‘parent’ and is completely stress-free for me, the ‘child’ (but exhausting, because my brain is running at full capacity). I’ve had a nice chat with my tutor-to-be and she seems to be excited to try it out (and also has kids, which helps, I’d say), and I’m excited as well! Here are two examples of Wimmelbücher pages. The pictures only represent a quarter or a third of an actual (double) page. When doing Thai, we would spend up to two hours per double page. Apologies for the bad quality of the pictures, my phone is dying. 
You see that there’s just heaps of stuff going on in the pictures, clearly enough to talk for a long time. The books I have will have the same people showing up on subsequent pages. Wimmelbücher (I don’t know the English word for it) are actually for very young kids, and the idea, as far as I understand it, is that the caregiver and the kid look at the pictures together, and the caregiver talks and explains stuff. Pretty much what my tutor and I will be doing as well :) EDIT: links to the Wimmelbücher I will use: here, here and here. Edited by Bakunin on 28 March 2014 at 8:19pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5135 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 18 of 54 29 March 2014 at 10:01am | IP Logged |
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Writing this log makes it painfully obvious how much I’m on the fringe here on HTLAL. I literally know nobody who takes a similar approach to language learning in the beginner stages. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, but all I can see is textbooks, grammar study and translation. I do enjoy following logs and taking part in certain discussions, and I’ve gotten some good media recommendations for English and French over the years. But there’s nobody actively studying Thai, very few who do Turkish or Polish wholeheartedly, and as far as I know nobody I can look to for inspiration when it comes to language acquisition techniques that avoid translation and explicit grammar analysis in the early stages. It is the social aspect, the many nice people here and the shared passion for languages and foreign cultures that keep me here, I guess, but today I feel really downhearted about being always the one out on the fringe :(
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| nancydowns Senior Member United States Joined 3927 days ago 184 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 19 of 54 29 March 2014 at 2:00pm | IP Logged |
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Hey Bakunin, don't get downhearted! I follow your log because Turkish is on my list. I wish I could go ahead with it right now while you are learning and
enjoy the acquisition process with someone else. Unfortunately, I am maxed out on my language learning right now because I am trying to take beginner Spanish into intermediate and trying to get to the beginner stage with Arabic. I admire you because you are okay with ambiguity. That is where I would fail at your approach because I am not any good at not understanding something. I am amazed at the programs you write for language learning. You have an amazing approach, and you shouldn't worry about if it is a popular approach or not, it is what makes you enjoy languages. In learning Arabic, I am delving into grammar, and I am sure I am in over my head. It would be interesting to try your approach! I am learning Arabic with someone else, and she chose the book, so I'll stick with our program, but maybe in the future with another language -- like Turkish! I will try your approach... we'll see. It takes a lot of bravery to do it the way you are doing and a lot of patience. I surely wish I could get my hands on some good Arabic children's books like you did with Turkish! I have been following your blog since you began it, and I am sorry I never posted before. Don't get discouraged from posting here because I, for one, am very interested! :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bjorn Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4873 days ago 244 posts - 286 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 20 of 54 29 March 2014 at 2:34pm | IP Logged |
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Don't feel downhearted.
This log is interesting and inspiring. I think I will do something similar with french. Sorry, not for picking a more exotic language. However, I have studied Vietnamese for a while, some years ago. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4363 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 21 of 54 31 March 2014 at 8:45am | IP Logged |
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I agree, this is a very interesting and inspiring log. So what if you have your own method? It's not as if we all follow one particular text book. Everyone make their own combinations and experiments. Yours is by far one of the most interesting.
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| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4052 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 22 of 54 31 March 2014 at 11:43am | IP Logged |
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I subscribe these guys above.
I started reading your log because Turkish is a language that I will probably face in the future, and I find your log addictive and inspiring. You make me want to start a new language only to test your method! Dammit! In first instance when I read that you will not study any grammar I simply thought "no grammar? with Turkish???" and I was absolutely perplex (mostly because I like studying grammar - even if with my best languages I learnt mostly by input and studied a little grammar) but reading what you're doing I find it absolutely brilliant (I'm a software engineer hehe). Only one thing: right now you're acquiring the language through total assimilation; what do you plan to do when it will be the moment to start activating the language? Edit: I have another question, how much time are you dedicating to it per day? Please continue! :) Edited by tristano on 31 March 2014 at 1:17pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5135 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 23 of 54 31 March 2014 at 4:33pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah, I must have had the blues... thanks everybody for cheering me up :)) The nice thing about HTLAL is the diversity of views and methods, and I'm happy to be part of it.
Tolerance for ambiguity... yes, that's certainly key to what I'm doing. I think I started out with very little tolerance for ambiguity in my life, I always needed to nail things down. But over time my attitudes have evolved, and I'm sure non-linguistic factors have contributed as well. Now I actually enjoy ambiguity - there is something playful about it -, and figuring things out on my own always excites me. It's a big part of what makes my studies fun. Grammar... yes, we'll see how it goes :) I'm curious as well. My strategy will rely on (a) developing Sprachgefühl (a feeling for what's right and what's wrong, driven by massive amounts of input), and (b) copying what I see and hear, and then expanding from there. I do like exploring grammar, but I prefer to do it once I've attained some proficiency in the language. Well, I'm still far away from any activation, but if my experience with Thai is anything to go by, I will see delays in my active skills for quite some time but not permanently. At some point, I will have to practice speaking and writing to get good at it, that's clear. For me, it's easier and more fun to do this from a strong base, but I appreciate that others want to engage much earlier. Interestingly, even when I couldn't express myself at all but would already understand most of what was being said to me, I had many good conversations by just using words and phrases back. Most people love to talk and are quite helpful and creative in moving the conversation forward as long as they see that the other side understands them well. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5135 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 24 of 54 01 April 2014 at 6:56pm | IP Logged |
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What do I know about Turkish verbs? In one of my last posts I said that Turkish verbs are a complete mystery to me. That’s not entirely true, I have started to notice patterns. What is true, however, is that there are many verb forms I haven’t seen frequently enough to develop any intuition as to what they really mean. Mainly for the record and to give an indication of where I am after a month of looking at Turkish science books for kids, here are the forms I’ve noticed so far:
What I take for the infinitive has a -mak or -mek ending and, at least in my corpus, is almost always followed by için, e.g.: Bu Adélie penguenleri kril avlamak için denizde dalıyor: Adélie penguins dive in the sea to hunt for krill. Çoğu sürüngen beslenmek için diğer canlıları avlar: Many reptiles hunt other animals to feed themselves. The ending -an or -en seems to mark present participles (or gerunds?): Bu yüzen buz kütlelerine buzdağı denir: This swimming piece of ice is called an iceberg. Timsahlar çok güçlü kuyrukları olan vahşi avcılardır: Crocodiles are wild hunters having very strong tails. As already mentioned earlier, I suspect that the ending -bilir indicates ability or possibility: Sürüngenler çok farklı yerlerde yaşayabilir: Reptiles can live in very different environments. Ayılar çok hızlı koşabilir: Bears can run very fast. A simple -ar, -er, -ır or -ir ending seems to be used for general statements: Bazı penguenler Antarktika’da yaşar: Some penguins live in Antarktika. Birçok örümcek avlanmak için ağ örer: Many spiders build webs to hunt. As always, I may be making lots of mistakes - but I would be surprised if I were completely off. Rather than a collection of true statements about Turkish grammar, this post is intended to be a reference in case I later want to look back on the first few weeks and months of my Turkish adventure. The key point, however, is: even though Turkish has a quite complex system of verb and noun forms, I don’t seem to need any structured introduction to its grammar in order to develop comprehension. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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