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Tackling Turkish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6925 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 65 of 91 18 December 2010 at 10:25am | IP Logged |
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Something awesome has happened!
Today is my last day in Nablus. Tomorrow, I head down to Jerusalem, where I'll spend the night before boarding a plane to Geneva, kicking around there for two days and getting some Christmas shopping done, then going back to the airport and flying to the States on Wednesday. I'm planning to move to North Carolina in early January, and with that in mind, I started poking around yesterday- applying for jobs, researching volunteer opportunities (the refugee relocation initiative in Raleigh looks promising) and... checking out what's going to be available in my area Turkish-wise. UNC Chapel Hill offers Turkish courses. Unfortunately, since they aren't lecture-based, auditing is not permitted, but I decided to get in contact with the professor in charge of them anyway. Her name is Cangüzel Zülfikar, and she's apparently about the most helpful person on the planet- she wrote me back all but immediately, saying she hopes I can find a way to attend her classes and giving me a huge list of Turkish resources, including a link to a Turkish students' society at the university which organizes weekly meetings to discuss literature and film... in Turkish. Whoa. She's also encouraging me to watch Hatırla Sevgili and compose weekly essays about the show, which she'll correct for me via email. I'm about halfway through the first episode and I think it's going to take a while to get my listening comprehension up to snuff. It's a bit annoying when I'm quite sure that I'd understand 80%+ of what's being said if it were in writing, but my aural comprehension is only around 25-30%. I tend to catch the first and last words in each sentence plus the greetings and interjections, but the majority of the real conversation is lost on me. I think it's going to be almost entirely a question of getting my brain to keep up with the speech; I have most of the important vocabulary, but I'm just not processing it fast enough. Anyway, I think this will be the push I need to really set to work on my listening comprehension. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| thephantomgoat Groupie United States Joined 5272 days ago 52 posts - 103 votes | Message 66 of 91 18 December 2010 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
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Congrats! That sounds like a great opportunity. :D
Just popping in to say I love reading your log and watching your progress through the language. I'm starting Turkish sometime this summer, and I like getting the chance to check out the resources you've used (the Turkish Listening Library looks great!). A quick question: overall, would you recommend Teach Yourself Turkish? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5648 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 67 of 91 21 December 2010 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Sierra,
I will be your TAC teammate for next year 2011. This suits me well because we are both students of Turkish. I restarted learning Turkish in May 2008. Başarılar dilerim! Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 21 December 2010 at 8:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hakan D Tetraglot Groupie Turkey Joined 4902 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: Turkish*, Icelandic, English, German Studies: Spanish, Greek, Swedish, Hungarian, Mongolian, Modern Hebrew, Russian | Message 68 of 91 25 December 2010 at 8:43pm | IP Logged |
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Though I can't promise for sure to be around 100% in the next coming year, I'll try to be of help to you, Fasulye and
other teammates in Turkish. If you're planning on any Skype meetings let me know so I can drop by also if I can. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6925 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 69 of 91 22 July 2011 at 8:38am | IP Logged |
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Well guys, I have some terrible news and some terrific news.
The terrible news is probably pretty obvious: I haven't posted here in seven months. Failed miserably to even get my grand TAC plans off the ground (they seem to have exploded in the hangar, to quote Calvin and Hobbes), and spent roughly four and a half of those months ignoring Turkish completely. There are no excuses! (But I'll throw one out there anyway- I was embroiled in a fruitless job search in North Carolina for three months, then taking a CELTA course in Prague for another one). The terrific news is this: Since mid-May, I've been living in Turkey. A series of wonderful coincidences secured me a great job here (writing for a guidebook startup on Turkey and doing some small jobs for a web design company). Unfortunately, back to terrible: I've been utterly lazy about my language-learning since getting here, and I can sadly say that I learned more- probably three times more- Turkish during three months in Palestine than I have during three months here. It's time to sack up and get back on this train, especially since I'm in an immersion situation which most language-learners would kill for. My biggest problem is speaking. I'm horribly shy about it, especially with people who I know speak far better English than I do Turkish (which is everybody in the office with one exception). I conduct all my shop transactions and such in Turkish, but with friends and coworkers it's all English English English. This must change. I recently complained about this tendency in a blog post, and have since decided that I really need to hold myself accountable by reviving this thread. Currently reading Harry Potter ve Ateş Kadehi (which is where I left off in Palestine... hard copy rather than PDF this time, which is much nicer). I average maybe ten unknown words per page, including the ones I can get from context but wouldn't know on their own. While I love Harry Potter and really enjoy reading it in Turkish, it's not the best way to gauge my reading ability because I know the books inside and out; it's quite possible that I'm overestimating my capabilities because the material is so familiar. Anyway, I'm going to keep up with a chapter or two per day until I finish it, and then look for something at a similar level which I haven't read before in any language. My number one goal is to stop with this stupid not-speaking nonsense. It's a two- parter. First, I need to speak more in general, and second, when I DO speak, I need to work on actually using the vocabulary I know I have and not responding with one-word answers. I think- and desperately hope- that once I do this and gain a certain level of comfort with putting together sentences in Turkish on the fly, the floodgates will open. It frustrates me that I can sit on the windowsill after hours and compose long sentences about things, but when someone asks me a question I panic and blurt out a single word. So consider Tackling Turkish officially back open for business. ...and sorry about TAC, guys :( I really dropped the ball on that one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6925 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 70 of 91 21 September 2011 at 8:52am | IP Logged |
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Tackling Turkish log: sadly, once again neglected.
Turkish learning: fortunately, not so much. I'm still far more shy about speaking than I should be, but I'm at least giving it a shot now. Nothing Ever has been upgraded to thrice-weekly conversations with the secretary at my office and attempted chatter with my boyfriend- mostly we do talk in English, but I'm on track to change that. I'd really like to work on my listening skills as well. I've been watching some Turkish movies (with subtitles) and have attempted some TV shows, but generally I can't understand much of what they say. When listening to native speakers talking in real life, I can always identify the subject and usually about 40% of the specifics, so I have a long way to go. People tend to think I understand more than I do, I expect, because I often listen to Turks conversing and jump in with a comment when I understand something- but then when they talk directly to me, I frantically think, "ok, I know it's something about xyz, but WHAT exactly?!" Definitely need to practice listening some more, because quite often it's just the speed which throws me off; when they repeat it slower, I know every word. As for writing... you guys won't believe this. There's been a lack of work at my office lately, so my bosses set me to translating some articles English to Turkish for one of their sites, then sending the text over to the secretary for correction. Yes, I'm actually getting paid to work on my Turkish! I've learned a bunch of new words this way, activated a lot of previously-passive vocabulary, and become far more comfortable with various grammatical structures. Hell yes. Reading- another success. I bought five books recently: Mahrem by Elif Şafak (The Gaze) On Küçük Zenci by Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None) Müthiş Dahiden Hazin Bir Eser by Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) Yıldız Tozu by Neil Gaiman (Stardust) Küçük Şeylerin Tanrısı by Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) Out of these, On Küçük Zenci (despite having a rather offensive title) is by far the easiest going- I read 50 pages of it yesterday. I can follow the plot no problem and miss probably 6 or 7 words per page. I'm taking a loose approach to learning these by looking up maybe 70% of them and writing down about 5 per chapter which seem the most useful. After this, I'm going to move on to Küçük Şeylerin Tanrısı, which a quick glance through the other books suggested is the second-easiest. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5666 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 71 of 91 23 September 2011 at 9:17am | IP Logged |
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This log made me want to restart learning Turkish :) Congrats on the job and finding your way to Turkey, that's incredible! Good luck!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6925 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 72 of 91 26 September 2011 at 6:49pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the comment, Crush! Let me know if you start relearning Turkish :)
As I noted in my last post, speaking and listening are by far my worst areas. I'm trying to tackle this head-on. For listening, I've been watching movies in Turkish. I can handle Disney ones without subtitles (recently watched two of the Shrek movies dubbed in Turkish and I'm now watching Up)- I don't understand 100%, but I know what's going on and can catch a fair amount of the dialogue. The next step is to get into some actual Turkish cinema, for which I'm planning to use Turkish subtitles to supplement my understanding. Speaking remains a source of embarrassment for me, really. My speaking is so far below all my other skills that it's just frustrating. I can put together a decent sentence in writing, but when it comes to saying one out loud, I just panic and can't even think of where to start. I'm practicing more with my boyfriend, but what I really need to do is start thinking in Turkish as much as possible. Before I can even really work on endings and such things, I need to get to a stage where the structure of Turkish sentences is more natural to me. Nose, meet grindstone. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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