Language Issues of the Exchange

The Fulbright Program was able to propose a match between Ramazan and I because both sides of the exchange could take place in English. Ramazan himself is fluent, and his school, Eyuboglu, teaches most subjects in secondary school in English. Many students in Turkey, especially at private schools, learn English beginning in the first grade. They continue English all the way through, and gain enough fluency to take many classes in English in high school. Many of the top universities in Turkey teach in English, at least for technical subjects.

Evie and I decided that living in Turkey we would want to learn some Turkish. We were able to take 8 weeks (8 lessons) of immersion Turkish at Berlitz in Boston. Before we left, we had a decent grasp of such basics as pleasantries, numbers, colors, basic nouns, and very simple sentences.

We had heard rumors that everyone in Istanbul would speak English, so we wouldn't need Turkish. This was not our experience. While you do often find people with some English (sometimes the Turks will find someone around who speaks English), most merchants and Turks on the street (away from tourist sites) do not know English. For instance, the simitci (man who sells simit, a type of sesame pretzel) shown above would most likely not speak English. While you probably could stumble through a visit to Istanbul by pointing, we have found that we want to learn Turkish. Each transaction or conversation comes a bit easier, but it can be frustrating. Even when we feel we know exactly what to say to order in a restaurant or pay a bill, we still run into a sentence which completely goes over our head. However, for the most part learning Turkish is fun and rewarding.

"You speak Turkish very well!"

The Turks are really remarkably encouraging about trying to speak Turkish. If you can put even a few words together and show some effort, they will complement you warmly. Sometimes it ridiculous: we have walked into a corner store and said, in Turkish, "Hello, I want a big bottle of water," and the shopkeeper will say "Oh, you speak Turkish very well!" We can't imagine this happening in the US! We have also noticed that the Turks are not sticklers for proper pronunciation: if you try to say something, they not only will probably understand, but appreciate the effort.

Not many people in the rest of the world learn Turkish, and this may be part of the Turks' enthusiasm for foreigners who try to learn. But there is more: the Turks are a very warm people who seem to really like foreigners in general.

The Turkish Language

As our Teach Yourself Turkish (highly recommended!) book points out, what makes Turkish difficult to learn is that it is just different than English and western European languages. Its origins are the highlands of central Asia, and has had influences from Arabic and Persian, and therefore it is just different. Most vocabulary is new to us, and knowledge of Romance languages doesn't help much. However, it is written in the Latin alphabet, which was mandated by Ataturk in 1924.

But, on the other hand, there are more important reasons why Turkish is an easy language to learn:

• Turkish is completely phonetic language: you pronounce it exactly as you spell it, always, no exceptions! And, each letter stands for a single sound. No double letters like the English -ch- or -ou-.
• Nouns do not have genders.
• The grammar is very simple and regular. There are simple constructions that are used the same way universally.

Some examples:

• var and yok are great! Meaning basically "there is" and "there is not," they are used all the time, including in cases where in English you would use the possessive. Where in English you would say "We have no bread," in Turkish you would say simply "Ekmek yok."
• Tamam is used all the time! It basically means OK.
• Making questions is really easy in Turkish, all you need to do is add mi (usually pronounced "muh") to a simple statement. For example, var mi? means "is there?" and tamam mi means "is it ok?". Making any verb negative or a question is similarly easy.
• buyurun is something you hear all the time from shopkeepers, waiters (there seem to be no waitresses in Turkey), and everyone else. It is an all-purpose word that can mean "here you go," "can I help you," or "look at this."
• efendim is an all-purpose and polite greeting for both men and women meaning either "sir" or "madam." Also used to answer the phone.
• The greetings are easy and standard: merhaba (hello) works at any time, gunaydin (good morning), iyi gunler (good day), and iyi aksamlar (good afternoon/evening).
• cok means "very," and it is used all the time, most frequently with cok guzel (very nice, very beautiful).
• To count to ten, start with bir (one), then iki, uc, dort, bes, alti, yedi, sekis, dokuz, and on (ten). In Turkey, you also quickly learn numbers into the billions, because of the exchange rate: 1 US Dollar = 1,600,000 Turkish Lira. So a loaf of bread (very cheap!) is around 200,000 TL, a bus ride is 750,000 TL, and a beer is about 3,000,000 TL. A nice carpet starts at around bir milyar (1 billion or 1,000,000,000) lira. One saying we like is: "In Turkey, everyone's a millionaire!"
• One thing we say alot is cok az turkce konusiyorum (I speak very little Turkish). Verbs always come at the end of the sentence.

one note: the software I'm using does not include the 6 special letters Turkish has that English does not have (c with a "tail", g with an accent, i with no dot, o with dots, s with a tail, and u with dots). These letters are easy to get used to.