Türkiye Part 1 : Turkçe.
So hey, hello!
Long time no see everyone! A month since I last wrote something which is appropriate for Super Junior non-experts. (I don’t promise that this will be one, but, let’s see..)
Alright! So I’ve been in Istanbul for more than a month right now, I’M IN LOVE WITH THE CITY, basically have been used to the food (FYI some foods here rather have an extreme taste, like how it’s extremely salty, or sweet, or plain bland), have been used of fasting 17 hours each day, have been used of the extreme weather change (35-40 degrees celcius when it’s not raining and 17 degrees celcius when it is raining), have been used of getting checked out (a rather inappropriate phrase, but I insist.. ) by many ones because of looking different and being asked “sen neredelisin” and some other friendly yet curious questions everyday, and surprisingly have been used of sick drivers who drive like each of them had 9 lives (well it’s not all of them are those kind of drivers, but let’s just drop the topic, I’m gonna tell you some more important updates :p).
AND one thing I haven’t been used to is………………………….. the language, the most important thing to socialize, which is the basic need of human as a social creature, I can proudly say that I’m now feeling so tortured.
Yes you get the point right, I am now trying to tell you my difficulties in learning Turkish.
First of all, I want to tell you that Turkish is very different from English and Indonesian, so if you have learned those languages before you learn Turkish, there will be a huge huge twist of rules.
To say that Turkish is one of the most complicated languages is basically not true since the pronunciations are easy (a total different case for accent, though), the language itself is rather logical, and so on. The problem comes when you meet these points : 1) you don’t know about the language at all when you first came here, I regret those times I ditched Turkish, 2) you’re in a rather old age to easily adapt to a new language, 3) you still live with Indonesians even after a month since your arrival, and 4) your native language has a total different order and different rules and of course different grammars compared to this language.
I have this Turkish teacher whom I call hocam abla (hocam : Teacher; abla : older sister. Grammatically wrong, but it is funny, so yeah). She is extremely friendly and helpful, she likes talking to me, appreciating simple jokes that I tell her in Turkish, tolerating me when I am sleepy in morning classes, and paying attention to my Turkish development. I have also been taking notes in my mind every time I watch the Turks communicating, paying attention to the grammar things I’ve learnt and try to implement it in basic conversations. But really dear….
I have come to this point where I write so many buts in a post. /sigh
When English has this basic pattern (if I’m not mistaken) :
Subject - verb - object - some other necessary information
Turkish has this different pattern :
Subject - Some other necessary information - Object - Verb
or sometimes it goes with this pattern :
Some other necessary information - Subject - Object - Verb
It depends on the context of the sentence.
When you try to say “I’m eating döner with my friends” your brain will be forced to mix all those words, translate them into Turkish, change the words order so it will be like “Ben arkadaşlarımla döner yiyorum” which literally means “I’m with my friends döner eating”. Yes, I haven’t been able to fully understand nor speaking Turkish in impulse without doing those orders.
Another factor that makes it harder for me to comprehend Turkish is… living with my Indonesian friends.
Of course I still chat and joke with them in Indonesian, and in Turkish if Hocamabla is around. Some things that advantage me the most from living with my Indonesian friends and seniors are, first, I know exactly where to ask help from without having to think about the language barrier, second, they help me to get used to Istanbul, third, they help me soooooo much (I could cry!!) to manage my documents here, especially when the things make me deal with Turkish people like activating my phone-card, asking for the living permission and so on. I am so thankful for them T_T
There’s always a bad thing behind every good thing. I don’t feel the necessity or urgency to talk in Turkish with my Indonesian fellows. I fail to improve much. But I don’t really regret this point and I already told you the reason.
It’s now 6.18 in the morning, I have a Turkish exam in 4 hours and yet I’m still writing something to share, aren’t I nice?
Well, I really have to go to sleep right now but I promise I will come with an update about people and places here as soon as possible in other ‘Türkiye-part’s. Thank you for reading fellas :)
PS : Another unique thing about Turkish is it doesn’t have ‘W’ so we get to replace ‘W’ with ‘V’. How you pronounce ‘V’ is also a little different when you pronounce it in English. ‘V’ in Turkish sounds between ‘V’ and ‘W’. Same goes to Ü which is pronounced as ‘ew’ and Ö as ‘eow’ and I as ‘eu’ in terminate not in eureka.
PS 1: I’m sorry for being diary-ish.
PS 2 : I’ve been accepted to Faculty of Economics Anadolu University (I’m so happy and relieved) :DDDD I’m still waiting for the announcement of Istanbul University but I will enjoy it wherever I end up in. Thank you so very much for supporting me :)
