Outside of Turkey, Turkish is spoken in parts of Cyprus, Bulgaria and Greece, once part of the Ottoman empire. Our teacher, Yektan, tells us that it is not really "like" any other language except Azeri. So tough luck for us!
About 60 million people speak Turkish although, like Yektan, most speak at least one other language (in Yektan's case, he speaks Armenian, English, Kurdish and some French). Interestingly, Turkish was written in Arabic script until 1928, when Kemal Ataturk ordered that it be converted to the Latin alphabet as a way to de-Islamify the new nation. An Armenian was actually the one Ataturk assigned this task to. Before 1928, most Turks were illiterate; currently, Turkey has almost a 100 percent literacy rate, better than the United States.
It is both a blessing and a curse to have a teacher as erudite as Yektan. He is endlessly patient with us and has a keen sense of humor. But he knows so much about the language that we often go off into fascinating tangents, and are still struggling with the "Tarzan" Turkish we will need for our stay.
Mary Lee Settle writes in "Turkish Reflections" about a similar problem. She calls her style "such much" Turkish: "So this language, with its echoes of nomads and emperors, pashas and ghazis, sultans and riches, and country matters, with its verbs of more than forty tenses, including the very useful one for innuendo that I wish we had, its oblique politeness, this language with its own poetry of front- and back-rhyming vowels, this old tongue that contains within it all the past of Anatolia, is, for me, a shorthand. I get along, though. Turks are very polite people."
Yekytan's sister, Zeynep, has taken over the teaching duties for Frances and Ray, and, predictably, they are blasting along much faster than their parents. Frances is already into conjugating verbs and Ray can count past twenty. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad are great at saying "Goodbye!" (gule gule), "Bread!" (ekmek) and "Water!" (su). To hear a clip, click here (apologies -- I am still looking for a better way to post audio, so please ignore the ads): http://www.filelodge.com/files/room29/792424/Yektan%20lesson.wav
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I do wish this blog was updated daily to help us keep in step with the thousands of thing to do before going overseas for an extended Fulbright Scholarship. We are missing the bases that MUST be touched before 4 people can leave life is the USA an be accepted in TURKEY.
What are the numes of the Colleges that you two will teach at while there?
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