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Tackling Turkish

  Tags: Turkish
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
91 messages over 12 pages: 13 4 5 6 7 ... 2 ... 11 12 Next >>
Sierra
Diglot
Senior Member
Turkey
livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6950 days ago

296 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: English*, SwedishB1
Studies: Turkish

 
 Message 9 of 91
12 April 2010 at 4:17pm | IP Logged 
I've been neglecting TYT and Mnemosyne a bit the last few days in favor of Harry
Potter. I felt a little guilty about that at first, thinking that it was so far beyond
my level that I wouldn't get much out of it, but I think I was wrong. Sure, it's
definitely not something I can cruise through without a dictionary (I'm looking up at
least five words per sentence), but I think it's actually doing me a lot of good. I've
picked up a few new words from looking them up time and time again, and even better, I
feel that I've improved significantly at picking out endings (on both verbs and
nouns) since I started with HP.

I've also been listening to Turkish radio- I understand very little except numbers and
the odd word here and there, but I hope it's letting the rhythms of the language soak
into my brain.

There's so much I want to accomplish every day: I'd love to spend an hour with
flashcards, an hour or two with TYT, an hour-plus listening to Turkish radio in the
background while doing other stuff, as well as reading a page of HP and working through
part of the Wiktionary list of the top 1000 most common Turkish words I found the other
day. Man, there just aren't enough hours in the day. I get home from work around 7:30
and go to bed by midnight, and even spending every hour in between on Turkish (which is
more or less what I'm doing), I still barely get through a third of that.

Oh, well... I'll keep doing what I can!
1 person has voted this message useful



dolly
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5616 days ago

191 posts - 376 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Latin

 
 Message 10 of 91
13 April 2010 at 9:59pm | IP Logged 
I plan on starting Turkish within a year, and I came across this at Amazon: Turkish-English Short Stories Series. These are dual-language texts. One of them is rare and costs 400 dollars but the others are more reasonable so I went ahead and bought four of them.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Sierra
Diglot
Senior Member
Turkey
livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6950 days ago

296 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: English*, SwedishB1
Studies: Turkish

 
 Message 11 of 91
14 April 2010 at 3:08pm | IP Logged 
Those look good, dolly! I'll definitely keep them in mind for when my budget frees up a
bit.
----
It's hard for me to describe how this week has been Turkish-wise. I can't decide if I
feel like I've made a huge amount of progress or almost none at all. On one hand, I
think I definitely understand a bit more of Harry Potter than I did at the week's
start, and am slowly but surely coming to grips with the endings on nouns and verbs. On
the other hand, I go to bed every night feeling as though I've done nothing substantial
at all. Somehow four or so hours of Turkish study every night ends up feeling like
twenty minutes and I get discouraged thinking that I've done hopelessly little that
day.

I'm still working on TYT, although much more slowly than I was last week due to adding
a bunch of new stuff into my schedule. I'm in chapter 8 now; once I do the exercises,
I'll be halfway through the book.

I really, really, really need to focus more on vocab, which I think is a definite weak
point for me now. I've been neglecting the heck out of it this week. I don't mind
drilling, really, but it's probably my least favorite Turkish-related activity and ends
up routinely getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list... a list which
inconveniently never gets completed before it's time for me to go to bed if I have any
hope of staying awake during work the next day. I'll force myself to catch up this
weekend.


1 person has voted this message useful



Sierra
Diglot
Senior Member
Turkey
livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6950 days ago

296 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: English*, SwedishB1
Studies: Turkish

 
 Message 12 of 91
15 April 2010 at 1:51am | IP Logged 
I just found this page, which looks like it'll be pretty helpful in teaching me to nail
down verb forms and such:

http://cromwell-intl.com/turkish/

Why oh why do I have to leave for work in half an hour? Just between you and me, I'm
gonna take a short list of some vocab drawn from Wikimedia's 1000 most common Turkish
words list in to work and study that during my lesson planning time. Shhh!
1 person has voted this message useful



Sierra
Diglot
Senior Member
Turkey
livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6950 days ago

296 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: English*, SwedishB1
Studies: Turkish

 
 Message 13 of 91
15 April 2010 at 3:11pm | IP Logged 
Today at work, as planned, I neglected my textbook writing to study vocab. Instead of
using the Wikimedia list, though (which is a bit boring at the start because it's
largely comprised of conjunctions and things), I chose three "topics"- all old video
games, incidentally... Monkey Island, Wild ARMS, and Oregon Trail- came up with twelve
keywords for each, and spent the rest of the day practicing those 36 new words. I tried
to make them relevant to the topic and fairly common, so my MI list, for instance,
included things like "island", "map", "flag", and "to attack". I can recall all of them
without any trouble now, and found it a fun way to learn new vocab, so I'm going to do
it again tomorrow with three books I love (two children's books, Seven Daughters and
Seven Sons/The Moorchild, and my favorite book ever, The Snow Leopard).

I also got through chapter eight of TYT tonight, exercises and all. Patting myself on
the back for reaching the halfway point!

I feel as though I'm rapidly nearing the point of being able to clumsily and with
atrocious grammar express almost any basic idea. Feeling fantastic about Turkish!
1 person has voted this message useful



dolly
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5616 days ago

191 posts - 376 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Latin

 
 Message 14 of 91
15 April 2010 at 5:44pm | IP Logged 
I just realsed that ecampus has good prices on the Turkish-English short story collections (ISBNs here). $7 each, even the book that's $400 everywhere else.

I've been enjoying your thread a lot because I'm eager to plunge into this beautiful and fascinating language, as soon I reach a decent reading level in Italian. Congratulations on your progress in TYT :o)
1 person has voted this message useful



Sierra
Diglot
Senior Member
Turkey
livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6950 days ago

296 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: English*, SwedishB1
Studies: Turkish

 
 Message 15 of 91
23 April 2010 at 3:12pm | IP Logged 
Oh, man. Looks like I've been really lax about updating this log for the past week or
so.

The good news is that log or no, I've been chugging along with Turkish. Well... let me
clarify. I feel as though I've done just about nothing at all since I last posted. I'm
in chapter 10 of Teach Yourself Turkish (only two chapters of progress) and have done
absolutely nada in terms of drilling vocab- I haven't even entered any words past
chapter six in Mnemosyne yet.

I guess I've been doing *something* though, because it's working. I've been reading a
fair amount of Harry Potter and have progressed from looking up nearly every word and
still not really understanding the main idea of some sentences to reading mostly
without a dictionary and getting at least the gist of nearly everything. Suffixes are
far less mysterious these days... conjunctions are falling into place... word order
makes more sense... my vocabulary is somehow expanding.

Because of this, I've stopped looking up everything I don't know and started only
making infrequent trips to the online dictionary for unfamiliar words which crop up
over and over. I love this stage of language learning. I feel as though Turkish is
really beginning to make sense to me, but I haven't plateaued yet- every day I wake up
feeling like Today Sierra could easily and noticeably out-Turkish Yesterday Sierra.

Whoop whoop!
1 person has voted this message useful



geagleiam
Newbie
Bulgaria
turkishfree.webs.com
Joined 5024 days ago

3 posts - 4 votes
Speaks: Turkish

 
 Message 16 of 91
01 September 2010 at 10:43am | IP Logged 
I am a teacher of Turkish. When I began my studying as a student in university I saw that the books for learning the Turkish language are difficult or impossible to study by yourself. Especially the texts for reading exercises are so difficult, boring and little! So working on the basis of the principles of pedagogy, written by great pedagogues like John Amos Comenius and Alexander Molibog, I wrote a book for teaching Turkish and presently publishing it in the website:
http://www.turkishfree.webs.com/
I have worked lots of years searching for sources of Turkish language (in libraries, bookshops and websites) so you can contact me for further information.



2 persons have voted this message useful



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