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Started learning Kazakh | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6963 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 9 of 24 14 November 2006 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Latin will help a bit - turkic languages are often described as having cases. But i think this is a bit wishful thinking on behalf of grammarians, since these 'cases' don't correspond very well with parts of speech. The dative, locative and ablative mean something more like 'to' 'at' and 'from' (but added onto the end of the word instead of the front). The accusative is used for the direct object, but... only where it's a specific direct object (ie where 'the' would be used in english, or where the specifity is implied - ie where the object has just been referred to previously, or is a person referred to by name). The only one that strikes me as truly corresponding to a case is the genitive... The true alienness for me lies in three main features of the language: - SOV word order (often with the subject omitted because it's implied by the verb endings), - heavy agglutination of verbs to create the equivalent of conjugations and moods, and - vowel harmony, which you have to grasp before you can utter an intelligible sentence. All this said, it's far easier than chinese, and the FSI course makes a very good job of explaining, and progressively inculcating this grammar so that you can actually use it. So if the material is presented well, with enough exercises, there's no need for the learner to struggle. It's just that for Turkish at least most of the material i looked at failed to do this... Edited by onebir on 14 November 2006 at 12:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 6952 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 10 of 24 14 November 2006 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Good luck with Kazakh, and keep us informed about your progress! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| OCCASVS Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6443 days ago 134 posts - 140 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, English, French, Polish | Message 11 of 24 14 November 2006 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not sure of starting to learn Kazakh :( I've never tried seriously to learn a language by myself, so I should be very motivated before trying to learn Kazakh, another Turkic language or a Slavic/Caucasic one. Anyway, good luck! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6632 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish | Message 12 of 24 14 November 2006 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think vowel harmony to be quite simple and natural and wouldn't regard it as a major obstacle to learning Turkish/Turkic languages. The Turkish grammar book I possess spends half a page explaining it and that's appropiate I think. Of course if you already know a language with vowel harmony ( like Hungarian, a turkified Uralic language) it is nothing new at all. Edited by RogueRook on 14 November 2006 at 7:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6963 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 13 of 24 15 November 2006 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's easy to explain, but takes practice to get if you haven't come across it before. Combine enough simple but unfamiliar things, and they become difficult... That's why adequate drills are essential, and why in my opinion the FSI course is so much better than other materials for Turkish, and using Turkish as an 'intermediate target language' makes sense to me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6632 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish | Message 14 of 24 15 November 2006 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree with you - Active and proper application of vowel harmony is best trained by drills. I also downloaded the FSI Turkish course and it seems to be a good method. With the second volume being available soon there will be plenty of material to peruse. The Langenscheidt course I bought isn't nearly as good.
It is a great idea to learn Kazakh. These Central Asian Turkic peoples are currently in the process of restoring their national identity and reclaiming the exclusive use of their native languages in all fields of society. I recently read that Kazakhztan is going to remove the last opressive symbols of Stalino-Fascism and replace the cyrillic script with the unified Turkic Alphabet devised by Atatürk. They will also clean their language from russian loans thus further consolidating their sovereignty and intellectual self-sufficiency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6963 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 15 of 24 16 November 2006 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There's some materials for other central asian languages discussed here.
Uzbek is quite plentiful, with a little Pashto, Taijik and Uyghur. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6963 days ago 484 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 16 of 24 16 November 2006 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I was just looking at some materials for tibetan, which has somewhat similar particles to turkish. They were described as post-positions, which i think is more accurate. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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