Turkish 101

Learning a new language is not as easy as simply translating verbatim sentences into English. It requires a little bit more finesse, a little more savvy, to memorize not just words, but culture and, dare I say it, a different way of thinking.

Thus my annoyance when some of the students in my Turkish class constantly question WHY Turkish grammar is THIS way or THAT way.

For example, Turks say, “open the light” and “close the light” to mean “turn off” and “turn on” the light. It’s just a different way of thinking about how you use electricity. No big deal, right?

Wrong. One guy always has to ask, WHY does it have to be this way? Why do Turks say, “I hate from mice” instead of just “I hate mice”? Why do Turks use a different verb to say “enter the room” versus “get on the bus”? In English we use two different verbs. WHAT’S SO STRANGE ABOUT THAT?

Then someone else sits there and says, Ah, bu çok zor, hocam (“This is so hard, teacher”) in a pouty, childish voice. Sure, it’s difficult. This is surely not rocket science, but it does take more than a few brain cells to memorize new vocabulary and string together sentences in a completely foreign structure.

The important thing, I think, when learning a new language, especially one that is so completely different from your own (like learning Turkish or Japanese when your first language is English, or learning Spanish or English when your first language is Turkish), is to suspend temporarily the way you look at the world.

Understanding that a chair” is also a sandalye and not having to translate the Turkish word EVERY time you read or hear it is important. Learning a language is more about absorbing new ideas than memorizing vocab lists that have been translated from English into Turkish.

It’s about reading a sentence or a paragraph and intrinsically knowing what it means without having to read it back to yourself in English. It’s about picking up hand gestures and facial expressions that change the meaning of words in a way that your language does not allow. It’s about seeing the world differently, from a perspective that allows for different meanings.

One of the guidance counselors at my high school had a sign outside her door that said something to the affect of, “The breadth of a man’s vocabulary greatly affects how he sees the world.” That is to say, the more words and therefore ideas you know, the more you can comprehend and explain and describe the world around you. Learning a new language is not unlike expanding your vocabulary.