We've been here over 9 months now. How did that happen?! Here are a few thoughts on language learning and Turkish that have been buzzing round my head over the last week:
- Learning Turkish is tough. The word order is backwards. In English our sentences usually follow the format "subject - verb - object". In Turkish, the usual order is "subject - object - verb". The verb always comes at the end, and the verb ending denotes the subject, so actually you often don't need to include the subject at the start, because the verb ending tells you who is doing it. (Apart from word order is flexible in Turkish, so actually if you want to emphasis something you can switch the order around... but let's not go there). Which means that if you are still mentally translating everything to English, you have to listen to the entire sentence, and particularly the last syllable, before you can translate it in your head.
- Just in case you want extra proof, the American Foreign Service Institute classify languages into 4 categories of difficulty (relative to English). Easiest is Category I, which includes French, Spanish, Dutch and a few others. Category II includes German, Indonesian, Malay and Swahili. Category III is "languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English" and includes many of the Eastern European languages, Hindi, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu - and Turkish. Category IV are languages which are "exceptionally difficult for native English speakers" and includes Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
- I'm so glad I don't have to learn a Category IV language. Category III is quite enough for me.
- And I'm also absolutely sure I am not called to be a translator. The idea of learning a language that possibly can't yet be written, finding a way to write it then translating our favourite book just sounds impossible. So much respect for those people who are doing that!
- It would have probably been helpful if I'd been taught English grammar at school. When I was at school, the educational vogue was not to teach grammar at all. Pre-moving here, I could define a verb, adjective, adverb, noun and that was about it (and I didn't do too badly in my English Language GCSE...). I hear it's swung back the other way in schools now, and while maybe it's gone too far, when it comes to learning another language it really helps if you've been taught the grammar of your native language. On the flip side, I think the same issue probably happens with native Turkish speakers here and their knowledge of Turkish grammar. So that makes me feel better.
- The Turkish language has undergone monumental changes in the last 80-90 years. One of the major reforms made was the replacement of the Ottoman Turkish alphabet (which was a version of the Arabic alphabet) with the Latin alphabet. In addition, there was a drive to remove loan words (particularly Arabic and Persian words) from the language and introduce replacement new words, or revived old Turkic words. The evolution of a language that normally takes place over several centuries has happened in a few decades here. My language helper told me the other day that when she was growing up here, her grandparents would speak to each other in Turkish and she wouldn't understand them, because the language had already changed so much.
- Turkish is still evolving and undergoing changes! For example, Atatürk's speech to the new Parliament in 1927 used a style of language that later became so difficult to understand that it was "translated" into modern Turkish in 1963. However, the language has continued to change, so that another "translation" was done in 1986, and a third in 1995.
- Language learning stretches your brain in a way that no other subject does in quite the same way. The actual learning of grammar and vocab is fairly straightforward (the only problem being the amount of vocab) - but internalising it so you can understand what's being said and use it correctly yourself is a different kettle of fish (<-- see that casual use of an English idiom? Turkish idioms have to be learnt as well, and just like English ones, sometimes they make very little sense when you read them literally...)
- Language learning is slow, steady work. It's sometimes hard to see how far we've come (when we want to feel like we've made some progress, we go and listen to the listening MP3s from our first course and realise how much they annoy us because the speaking is so incredibly slow.) And it's also good for our pride - we go and try to listen to something at normal Turkish speed and realise we still have a way to go! Thankfully we have another 15 months of dedicated language learning...
