Aaaah, the Turkish language. It is the grammar that makes me feel doomed each time I study it! If I want to say:
"I am looking for an inexpensive carpet" ... I must say ...
Ucuz bir halı bakıyorum.
(Inexpensive one carpet I am looking for)
If I want to say:
"How much is this small carpet?" ... I must say ...
Bu küçük halı ne kadar?
(This small carpet is how much?)
Here's the question. Why, when when using "expensive" does it go before "one carpet" but when using "this carpet" the word "small" goes inbetween "this" and "carpet".
I heard a man tell me the other day than in order to learn this lanugage you must not attempt to understand the grammar. I think this is why I have done fairly well with the language. I have always been okay in my life with not knowing "why." If you want to know "why". But sometimes I must remind myself to replease the natural human tendency to understand and instead just blubber words.
The other thing that is hard for me about this language is knowing that, in just 1.5 years, we will leave this Base here in Turkey and move on somewhere else. When we were initially moving here, we thought we might extend and stay an additional two years. However, due to a myriad of reasons, that does not appear to be in our best interest. Therefore, we will most likely move somewhere else after this. And chances are, it may still be overseas which means wherever we move will speak a NEW language.
I have to decide that learning is always good and that you never know when you will use it. So I am sticking to that. I enjoy learning. I'll keep learning. Even though the chances of me using a language only spoken in this country is low in the future. And if we move to another country where another language is learned, I'll work to learn that one too, and accept it's lack-of-use once we come back to the USA in what we believe will be the summer of 2014.
Onward!
2 comments:
i was a spanish major in college. i didn't really know much english grammar, and actually learned more about english grammar in spanish class than i did in english! because spanish usually follows a pretty solid formula, learning the grammar made it easier to "plug and play." however, when it came time to learn the subjunctive, which we do not have in english, trying to learn the "grammar" of it made things much more difficult.
i studied for a month in mexico through my college, and that is where the concept of the subjunctive really took hold. why? i think it was because our teacher taught in spanish and didn't know how to relate it to english grammar. somehow it worked.
that said, i think it is perfectly fine to try to understand the grammar of the language, or at least find patterns to help you, because there probably are grammatical rules that are essentially patterns... which will help. but it's also perfectly fine to try to run with it and not understand the grammar... maybe something will click that way when you least expect it!
so, for what it's worth... it seems like, in your examples, small - the adjective - always goes before the noun. perhaps number adjectives always stay in between the noun and any other adjectives? "this" is a... something that i can't remember... not a noun, not an adjective. =) so to me, it makes sense that the adjective would go inbetween "this" and the noun.
i may be totally wrong, though! haha... good luck!
It sounds to me like you need to translate phrases Yoda would say into Turkish!
Post a Comment