Put That Pronunciation To Use!

Now that you know how to pronounce Turkish words, you can have a go at some Turkish tongue twisters! I’m still working on actually being able to say normal difficult Turkish words them, but people love to tell them to me and try and teach me them when they find out that I’m learning Turkish.

The following are some of the most popular ones, I snatched them from online, had them approved by my host brother, and made some minor corrections to the translations.

Bir berber bir berbere gel beraber Berberistanda bir berber dükkanı açalım demiş.

One barber said to another barber, "Come, let's go together and open a barber shop in barberland".

Kartal kalkar dal sarkar, dal sarkar kartal kalkar.

The eagle takes off, the branch bends; the branch bends, the eagle takes off.

Bu yoğurdu sarımsaklasak da mı saklasak, sarımsaklamasak da mı saklasak?

Should we put this yoghurt away after adding garlic to it, or before adding garlic to it?

Bu duvarı badanalamamı mı, badanamamalı mı?

Should we whitewash this wall or should we not whitewash it?

Şu köşe yaz köşesi, şu köşe kış köşesi, ortada su şişesi.

That side is summer side, that side is winter side, in the middle is a water bottle

Kırk küp, kırkınında kulpu kırık küp.

Forty cubes, all forty with a broken handle.

Herkes Öğrenibilir!

Everyone Can Learn:

Making the Title of This Article Not Scary

Unrelated Photo: Me at Kocatepe Mosque,
the largest in Ankara

As my Turkish is improving I’m feeling more inclined to throw in a few Turkish words here and there in my posts, and it dawned on me the other day that you may have been sitting at your computer on December 5th sadly thinking “Well it’s great that I can call my brother erkek kardeş or my husband’s sister görümce, if only I knew how to pronounce these words!”

Behold, Miranda’s Crash Course in Turkish Pronunciation
First, A Brief History Lesson:
For thousands of years the Turkish language was written in the Arabic script. In 1928, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk announced that the Turkish language would be changed to the Latin alphabet, as a means of making the new Republic of Turkey more Western oriented, and less tied to the Middle East. He appointed a Language Commission to create a script to accommodate the Turkish language, and they invented spellings to fit the actual sounds of Turkish words. Lucky for you and me, this means that once you know the way letters individually sound (each letter only represents one sound, none of this certain vs. curtain ridiculousness that goes on in English), you can easily sight read pretty much any Turkish word- though that doesn’t mean they aren’t tongue twisters!

~Fun fact: Wikipedia says that the Language Commission proposed allowing five years for the country to transition, but Atatürk thought this to be too long, he changed it to three months and then personally traveled throughout the country explaining the new system to the public.~

Below I’ve compiled a few Turkish learning books and websites that I had on hand to explain how each letter sounds in the best way that I can, but it’s not easy to teach sounds that we don’t have in English (I’ve italicized those that are different/unexpected), especially if I’m only typing them. I myself still struggle with the difference between o and ö or u and ü, and the pronunciation of ğ, as the vowels are the hardest part. While it is possible to extensively describe the way each vowel is said in terms of how to place your tongue and shape your lips, I find those explainations hard to follow if someone isn't there to show you and I consider these examples a pretty solid start. If you’re especially invested you can also always go to websites such as this one and press the speaker to hear the pronunciation.

a as in father, but shorter; as in car

b as in boy, bowl, bet

c as in jump, jade, gender

ç as in church, chin, chance

d as in debt, duty, dog

e as in best, less, fed

f as in felony, feeling, fling

g as in game, go, good

ğ unspoken but makes the preceding vowel longer; I’ve seen it described as a sort of soft y sound before, there is no comparable English word, sometimes you can get away with ignoring it...

h as in head, hello, half

ı as in the second vowel in halted, nation or portable

i as in bit, it or the first vowel in city

j as in the s in measure, leisure, treasure

k as in king, kiss, come

l as in look, lamb, listen

m as in man, money, mom

n as in neighbor, nice, nervous

o as in the o in falsetto, as in the French eau as in beau (to me it sounds the same as the normal o in bow, no or go, but I'm not sure why I’ve never seen it described that way)

ö as in the French deux or peu, I once saw it described as the u in urge

p as in pen, price, privilege

r as in rock, rent, rust

s as in sit, send, sun

ş as in shoe, shed, shine

t as in tea, tennis, tell

u as in pull or good

ü as in the French tu, or as in the German Müller, I once saw it described as the u in nude

v as in vent, verify, vanish

y as in yes, yellow, you

z as in zen, zebra, zest



For Further Reading:

Turkish Alphabet on Wikipedia

Atatürk’s Reforms on Wikipedia

Online Turkish Introductory Courses

Happy Birthday YES!

Today my exchange program, Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study, turned ten years old!

What a Day!

Wow, what is this? Miranda doesn't write on her blog for weeks, and then suddenly two days in a row? Let me tell you, I am just as surprised as you are.

I was going to wait and update things in an orderly fashion so that my life seems like series of events instead of a series of out of order messy blog posts, but I've decided that more important than either of these things is that events did happen, and they are dying to be told about. Something messy is better than nothing at all, and let me tell you that boy was I inspired today, despite having not written about my glorious November. Today was a day of all days and here is how it went.

 The day started with the absence of my English teacher, leaving me and my class with essentially four hours of free time. After spending the first period sitting around chatting and studying, we looked out the window to see that snow was falling, for the second day this year (its snowed early yesterday morning, but was all gone by the afternoon).


This is me and one of my classmates, we were so excited we ran outside to be in the snow, a friend took this out the window of our classroom.

This is us getting yelled at by a teacher leaning out of the window one floor above our classroom.

Later we all went outside and had a snowball fight, and basically the whole school joined in at break time. The snow was the ideal consistency, you barely had to touch it and it stuck together in perfectly throw-able clumps that also perfectly dispersed upon hitting the target.

The rest of the day I spent asking people what they thought about school uniforms, because two days ago the Turkish Ministry of Education decided to change the dress code for schools across the nation, allowing students to dress freely (with some restrictions) instead of having obligatory uniforms. This is kind of a big deal because school uniforms have been around for longer than anyone can remember. Even though the new rules don't officially go into effect until the coming school year, many students showed up to school today wearing jeans instead of skirts or slacks and the teachers held a meeting after school to decide if they will enforce uniforms for the rest of the year (we find out tomorrow). This decision from the ministry brings up other issues too; religious headscarves have been banned in grade schools for some time, for teachers and students alike (many of my classmates wear one to school in the morning, and put it back on in the bathroom after school)- will free dress allow them again? Don't uniforms serve an important purpose of covering up economic differences between students' families? Does it really matter what students wear or look like, aren't they only coming to school to learn? Isn't it just easier and quicker to roll out of bed and sleepily pull on the same thing everyday?

After school I had volleyball practice for my school's team, something I'm pretty proud of. I've never seriously played volleyball in my life, but I wanted to get involved with something after school, so I jumped at the opportunity when I saw a poster for tryouts. Having only the most basic understanding of the sport, I attribute my making the team solely to the fact that I read this article while brushing my teeth the morning of trying out:

http://m.wikihow.com/Set-a-Volleyball

Just kidding! (kind of... I really didn't know how to set a volleyball without jamming my fingers) I actually made the team because only six other girls showed up so they didn't have to cut anyone! I’m not very good (yet, heh heh heh), but it feels really good to be active and making friends outside of my class. We have our first match next week!

When I got home, two boxes were waiting for me, one from my dad and one from my grandmother, and few things are more exciting than getting mail.

Inside were candy canes and cookie sprinkles (per my request for the holiday season), as well as other excellent candies and sweets, and a plastic tub specially for making snow cubes, sand castle fill -and-dump style, to make the process of building igloos easier. I've been jealous for years since my dad mailed one to my cousins, but didn't get us one because we don't get enough snow in Seattle. I have got some big plans for this winter.


photo cred

After dinner I got a call from my friend Ruby staying in Gaziantep, and between bursts of laughter she urged me to check Facebook. Not only was I tagged in a photo standing next to the American Ambassador to Turkey, I was also tagged in a video clip from NTV, a Turkish national television station, brokenly attempting to talk about a service project we did two weeks ago.

Here’s a quick low-down: December 3rd was UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Two weeks ago we took the five hour bus ride to Ankara and had an excellent Thanksgiving dinner at Stefanie’s house, the same cultural attache that we visited before, and looks after the YES students. The following weekend we took photos all around Ankara with disabled students in conjunction with a photography studio. They collected our photos (all of us YES Turkey students and the students we met in Ankara), chose the best ones and put up an exhibit in a fancy mall in Ankara for the third. This past weekend we returned to Ankara, met with our AFS liaisons over the weekend, and attended the opening of the exhibit, to which many American foreign service members attended, including the ambassador, as well as some important Turkish figures. Many news crews came, and someone tipped a reporter that Ruby and I had the best Turkish of our group, so we were interviewed about the project. Absolutely regardless of whether or not our Turkish is the best in the group or not, getting interviewed is not easy, getting interviewed with a video camera and spotlight is even less so, and after getting interviewed with a camera, spotlight, and in a language I have three months of experience in, I’m pretty much just glad I got the gist of her questions and that words actually came out of my mouth.

In the clip I managed to say ‘We watched in Ankara and now this is very nice we are very excited.’ (I was trying to say I was glad we visited Ankara, but I had a minor verb mix up, though hey, I’m pretty sure I correctly conjugated everything). Ruby basically says that she has never worked with disabled students but that it was really very nice. I think Ruby has down one of the most fundamental steps in sounding like you know a language (or even just know what you’re talking about ever); you plan what you’re going to say and then you spit it out. Even if it isn't completely right, if you say it quickly and with confidence and conviction, it sounds like a million bucks.


At 0:17 you can see Ambassador Ricciardone giving pins to a few of the students we worked with.
At 1:03 you can see Şafak Pavey, a member of the Turkish Grand National Assembly on the left asking a question to a student. If you know what I look like really well you can see my face hovering in the background.
At 1:33 we are posing for this photo:



From left to right: back row: a woman that helped us with the photography project, a woman from the Embassy, Hana, Bridget, myself, Ambassador Ricciardone, Rya, Linnie, Şafak Pavey, Samet our AFS liaison, Stefanie who organized the project, Suderin who ran the photography part of the project. Front row: Ruby, Onur an AFS volunteer, Can our AFS liaison, Fatma the head of AFS in Turkey, the AFS coordinator at the Ankara offıce.
(Apologies to those whose names I am drawing blanks on)

At the very end, you can hear the beautiful voices of Ruby and I.

How To Refer To Your Family Members: A Brief Guide

In Turkish, there are specific names for people that are related to you, going beyond the simple aunt, uncle, grandmother, sister-in-law, etc. that I am used to in English.

Some are more commonly used than others, and the terms abi and amca (a man slightly older than you, a man quite a bit older than you) or abla and teyze (a woman slightly older than you, a woman quite a bit older than you) are respectful terms that can be used for anyone, not just a relative.

Often times the letter m is added to the end of a name to make it possessive, I refer to my host mom and dad as 'Annem' and 'Babam', meaning 'my mom' and 'my dad'.

Similarly to English, you can tack the whole word onto someone's name; I call my mom's sister 'Aunt Renee', or 'My Aunt Renee', in Turkish I would call her 'Renee Teyzem'.

Also a fair amount of these overlap; in the same way your brother's wife is also your sister-in-law. Which names are used casually or commonly probably varies from family to family, and in what context you are referring to the person. My cousin helped me come up with this list and had trouble thinking of some of the more obscure ones, he doesn't use or hear them too often.

Your mom is... anne
Your dad is... baba

Your sibling is... kardeş
Your younger brother is... erkek kardeş
Your younger sister is... kiz kardeş

Your older brother is... abi
Your older sister is... abla

Your mom's sister is... teyze
Your mom's brother is... dayı

Your dad's sister is... hala
Your dad's brother is... amca

A man related to you by marriage is... enişte
A woman related to you by marriage is... yenge

Any cousin is... kuzen

Your sister's husband is... bacanak
Your brother's wife is... elti
Your spouse's brother is... kayın

Your husband's sister is... görümce
Your wife's sister is... baldız

Your spouse's mom is... kayın anne (kayınanne)
Your spouse's dad is... kayın baba (kayınbaba)

On a side note,
Your best friend can be... kanka

Kurban Bayram: Eating Fresh Meat and Meeting New People

October 25th to 28th was Kurban Bayram, the Feast of the Sacrifices, an Islamic holiday which honor's Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his only son to prove his faith. You can read more about the history and religious side of the holiday here*.

 

A classmate of mine wrote this handy guide to how it is celebrated in Kayseri, homework for my English class was to explain Kurban Bayram to me:

 

On the first day off of school, which was the day before the holiday started, we went to visit the cemetery where Babaannem (my host dad's mom) is buried. Even though it was raining, the cemetery was full of people making visits and paying respects. On the way there we bought a tub of little hard candies and gave them out and greeted people as we walked to her grave. Other people also brought sweets and we were wished a Happy Bayram and handed chocolates, candies and Turkish delight by strangers as we walked.

 

 

On the first day of the holiday we drove out of the city to buy our cow. We crawled along in some of the worst traffic I have ever seen, until arriving in a farm and village area where we pushed down a dirt road barely wide enough for two lanes of traffic but full of cars, trucks, tractors, cows, people walking, people leading cows, cows tied to the back of slow moving trucks, cows in the back of slow moving trucks, little kids, and stray cats and dogs. I’m really not sure how everyone emerged in one piece, with cars passing one another where there clearly wasn’t room, and vehicles stopped in inconvenient locations. I could tell we were getting close when the fields near the road were filled with women and children sitting on tarps picking apart and sorting piles of beef. We eventually parked and walked to a dirt area in between buildings where we sat on concrete steps leading to a second floor balcony and watched the sacrifice of about a half dozen cows.

 

I’ll spare going into detail, as it was a little challenging to watch at times, but here is a brief overview. First the cow was led into the clearing, usually with a bag on its head, and then laid down by five or six men (these cows were big). It was then tied by its back leg to a little tractor crane which lifted it off the ground, and the men gathered around, removed the bag, and recited an Arabic saying before cutting it at the throat. It was lowered back onto the ground before being swiftly cleaned and butchered until it was slabs of raw beef given to the families that had bought it, and the unwanted bits were in piles off to the side.



Our cow

 

The place was busy and crowded with people, we stuck around for a few hours waiting for the cow that we had purchased to be cut, but there were so many to do that ours specifically wasn’t going to be done until much later. We got to see the cow, but we picked up our thirty-some kilos of meat later that night (cows are so large that the meat from a single one is split by about six families, and our personal meat was given out to multiple friends).

 



Tray of Baklava we bought to give to our Bayram visitors


That afternoon we returned home and got dressed up to go visiting family and friends. We spent that afternoon and the next morning driving to different parts of the city visiting all different types of people. At the door we were greeted with kisses on the cheeks (a normal Turkish hello), and given slippers before being led into the living room (in an attempt to avoid being given the inevitably too small slippers, I wore thick wool socks, hoping people would realize my feet weren't going to be cold. About half the time it worked, half the time it backfired as I had an even harder time getting my feet into the little sandals; they can be really difficult to refuse). We would stay for about half an hour and chat while eating yaprak, börek and baklava with black tea or fruit juice, usually followed by chocolates or Turkish delight. By the end of the day we were gorged and a few times we had to insist on not being fed full meals, or given more and more food and tea. I struggled to make small talk with my baby two month old Turkish, and though I couldn't get all too far, everyone seemed to love that I was trying. I met probably around 40 new people and went to a dozen houses, not always understanding how the people were related, and rarely catching names- but it was so fun! I got to see and brand new apartment building and the family we visited hadn't even finished moving in, I met a boy who couldn't speak any English but could play the guitar and sing a song in English, I got to hold an 8 day old baby, I met a man who had been to the U.S. 35 times as an army pilot and knew of Seattle because of the Joint base Lewis-McChord not far from the city, and I met a Turkish woman who spoke English because she'd been living in Australia for the the past 20 years and was back visiting for the holiday.

 





 





Our meat

As we toured the city, I saw that it was full of meat. It seemed so funny to me that chunks of beef were casually carried simply in overflowing grocery bags, but that is apparently the way to do it. People were walking down the street or visiting relatives just as we were, bearing bags of meat. People were on their lawns or street corners cleaning it or dividing it up, or trucks would drive by with uncovered racks of ribs in the back. There were also sheep and cows being sold and herded in fields in the city, something else that is not common daily. On the news they showed cows that had gotten loose in other cities, with videos somewhat akin to what you might see on America’s Funniest Home Videos as they confusedly ran into coffeeshops or refused to get out of the road. Onur told me that this happens every year, and responded to my laughter at a video of two men riding a motorcycle through Istanbul holding a sheep with ‘Turkish people do this all the time.’

 

 

Kirrikale from the balcony

Usually during Bayram my host family goes to the city of Kirrikale, where Anneannem and Teyzem live (maternal grandmother and aunt), as well as where family from Ankara and Aksaray meet up. This year my family originally decided not to go, but made a spur of the moment decision that we would go and surprise everyone by showing up on the night of the 26th. Only my aunt knew we were coming, so we surprised my mom's mom and dad, her sister and son, her other sister's husband and two kids, and her brother; with the addition of us five, it was one full apartment!

We ate soup, mantı, cooked the fresh beef from our cow, and stayed up late into the night chatting, laughing and watching soccer and ridiculous game shows on TV. In the morning we went to my grandmother's house and had a huge breakfast before making spur of the moment decision #2, which was to drive another few hours to Ankara with everyone to see the Body Worlds exhibit.

 

The Body Worlds exhibit series originated from a German scientist who created a way of preserving human muscles and organs so that real human bodies can be displayed in science exhibits (you can visit their website here to read more). It was incredibly interesting, and only slightly unnerving to see preserved fetuses and cross sections of different organs, and it was certainly a thought provoking follow up to the Kurban Bayram. What different contexts of viewing mammal’s insides!

 

My cousin Mustafa outside of Body Worlds
(no photos were allowed inside the exhibit)

The exhibit was in Turkish and English, but it seemed as though they weren't expecting many tourists to visit the exhibit (it does travel around the world), because the English was often around the other side of the cases or on the back of the stand alone explanation boards. I tried to be quiet and discreet as I climbed around display items a slid along walls trying to get a better look at the sometimes well hidden descriptions, but I sometime just gave up and had to make my own stories for the muscular systems posed for yoga. While my Turkish is improving and I worked through some of the descriptions when they were side by side with English, scientific terms and obscure body part names and functions are a whole different boat from knowing daily conversation.

After the exhibit we went out for lunch, and then drove the four hours home to Kayseri, and spent the last day of Bayram resting, though we did get a few Bayram visitors ourselves. Our neighbors across the hall got quite a few at once.

*In elementary school they taught us to never use wikipedia as a source, and it still makes me a little uncomfortable to reference it. However I have always found it to be quite accurate and that comparably thorough and largely unbiased articles can be hard to come by.

Frequently Asked

A look into the things my school mates are curious about. Very roughly in order of frequency, but I've been asked them all more than once.

Where are you from?
What is your name?
Which city are you from?
Do you like Kayseri?
Do you like Turkey?
Which do you like better, America or Turkey/ Seattle or Kayseri?
Have you eaten Mantı/ Pastırma/ Sucuk? (Foods that Kayseri is known for: a handmade ravioli-like dumpling, a cured beef, and a type of sausage)
When did you get here?
How long are you here for?
How long did it take to fly here? (People really like asking this, I'm not sure why, I guess it gives an idea of the distance)
Why did you come to Turkey?
Why did you come to Kayseri?
Why aren't you in Istanbul?
Did you choose to come?
How old are you?
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
-How old is he?
-Which university is he in?
-What is he studying?
What are your mother and father's jobs?
Where are your mother and father?
-Do you miss them?
-Do they miss you?
-Do you call them?
Do you miss your friends?
Do you like our school?
How is our school different from your school in America?
-Do you have uniforms at your school in America?
What is your religion?
What is your host family like?
-Do you have any host siblings?
-What are your host parents' jobs?
-Where do you live (in which district of the city)?
Do you know about L.A./ Miami/ Las Vegas/ New York/ Chicago? I want to go there someday; it is a very beautiful city/ my favorite NBA team is there/ I saw a movie about it.
What other language did you study in school?
Why is your hair short?
What Turkish music do you know?
Who is your favorite singer/ what kind of music do you like?
Do you watch tv with your family/ which Turkish soap operas do you watch?
Do you like Justin Bieber/ One Direction/ Rihanna/ Taylor Swift?
Do you know _______ NBA player/ team?
Is German class easy for you? German is very similar to English.


The most frequently asked question, and not just at school: Aren't you cold?

According to my classmates, friends, my host mom's friends, people that come over for dinner, and people whose houses we go to for dinner, being cold equates to getting sick. I'm often being asked where my slippers or sweater are, if I need to blow dry my hair, or if my toes will be okay in sandals on a sunny day in late September. If its brisk in the morning (I admit some mornings have been quite cold, but some I would only classify as 'slightly chilly') people break out thick sweaters and windbreakers.

On days that I didn't consider to be sweater worthy, classmates that I was barely acquainted with would come up to me as I stood in the school courtyard before school started, and ask me if I was cold, followed by questions about Seattle's presumably arctic weather that has made me so cold-loving.
Now, the past few days have been rather cold, but I've taken to wearing a sweater everyday because people get downright worried about me!