Hi everyone! I am looking forward to the conference, and hopefully to meeting some new people around the world and here at home. I currently have been focusing on Spanish, as my listening and reading comprehension is much higher than my ability to converse, and I am part of a small language exchagne group here in town to practice that.
I also spent some time studying Turkish on Duolingo, because I love watching Turkish TV and movies, and I found the language to be so fascinating - hoping to return to studying that soon.
I am hoping that in a few years I will be able to do some language immersion vacations - I was sad to see that we couldn’t go to Mexico, but hopefully next year we will be able to
Hi Heather,
Nice to meet you. I am curious how you got interested in Turkish. A friend of mine shared her textbook with me and it looked interesting, but I am trying my best to focus on one language at a time for now.
I got interested in Turkish watching Turkish TV shows on Netflix, and I found the sound of the language so compelling. Then I had some time to spare so I was doing the Duolingo Turkish module, and it got really fascinating, I had never seen an agglutinative language before. Also Turkish is really easy to get the hang of reading and pronouncing because of the way their alphabet was designed when they standardized the language. I have never gotten anywhere near conversing in it because it was really hard to find anyone to talk to here. I do find I can pick up a few words now watching a program, but I still need the subtitles.
I also studied Turkish for several years, mainly with courses at the adult education centre and university courses. It’s also the only agglutinative language I have experience with. I chose Turkish because we have a large Turkish population in my city. I have been a regular customer in a near-by Turkish supermarket and at that time I took initiative to ask questions in Turkish to the salespeople. But all the answers I got were in German, which deeply frustrated me.
Also my internet buddies for Turkish were not consistent, so I failed to build up a regular speaking practise to activate the language. At some point I took the descision to abandon my studies of Turkish, because I didn’t wat to have it as a “dead language”.
Your experience with speaking Turkish only to be answered in German echoes my daughter’s experience practicing her Spanish and getting answered in English! Yes, I haven’t found anyone consistent to practice with, so I have focused on Spanish for the past few months instead. Turkey is pushing to have more people learn the language, though, so maybe there will be more opportunities in the future.
Hello Heather from Las Vegas, I’m Zaiht from Mexico, welcome to the community, and you are welcome to visit Mexico whenever you want, si quieres practicar tu español, mándame un mensaje y te ayudo
