Entry 2: So far we’ve learned all the Turkish alphabets and some vocabulary like car, photo and book. Thanks to a crazy but useful Turkish alphabet song which stuck in my head and refused to fade away for a whole week, we learned the alphabet painlessly and had lots of fun singing it. (I think it’s a bit like Total Physical Response, or jazz chant.) Anyway, I really like the pronunciation of Turkish because it not only sounds beautifully exotic but easy to learn. (Well, except for the notorious flip R sound, but I already knew how to do it because I learned it in Spanish before.) What’s more, I found that some pronunciation is actually quite interesting. For instance, “lemon” in Turkish sounds exactly the same as it in Chinese. And Turkish “television” sounds very similar as it is in Spanish.

And today I learned some new Turkish terms on greeting and farewelling people by watching a teaching video on Youtube. One fact I observed through this video is that Turkish people are very polite, providing that they have different terms for different occasion even in the most common word “hello.” For instance, when we want to say hi to people we’re familiar with, we say “Meraba” or “Selam”; and to people we meet for the first time, in order to show our respect, we say “Merhaba.” When we want to say goodbye, the expression “Güle Güle” is pretty cute; just like bye bye in English.

 

I remembered last week we listened to a speech given by a Japanese who claimed that he could speak ten languages. I had to say that to be honest, I’m a little bit inspired. I agreed that the most efficient way to learn a language is to first identify what you want to achieve, and to selectively learn what we need. And he also urged people who want to speak a new language to have real communication with native speakers right after they learn some basic expression. I think this method is quite good but it sometimes could cause frustration to both speakers because the language barrier still exists. But it’s true that if people practice a new language this way continually, their speaking ability would enhance very soon.

From this talk, I start to reflect on myself. I think as an English, Spanish and Turkish learner, I often shrink when I have the chance to talk native speaker, being scared that they wouldn’t understand me. And this is exactly the reason why I never feel confident to speak foreign languages to people. In addition, I think it’s nearly impossible to find a native speaker who is willing to practice with me if I just sit back and wait for the chance to come. Recently, I’ve been thinking about seeking a Spanish native speaker who is learning Chinese, so that we could help each other. There must be some in our university campus. However, I don’t have any idea how to find them. I heard so many foreigners speaking France in our campus, very seldom do I hear Spanish. I wonder where the Latin American or Spanish students are.