Hey everyone!
Marcus' comment reminded me that I'd been meaning to write a post about the Turkish language, so I figured I'd do that now. It's been pretty fun, learning Turkish, although I'm tripped up a lot by pronounciation of the vowels, especially ö, ü, and the "i" without the dot (I haven't figured out how to type that one yet). My other languages have come in handy: Turkish has a "ma" particle, like Chinese, used to ask a yes-no question. Of course, where it's just "ma" in Chinese, it's "mi," "mi(no dot)," "mu," and "mü," because Turkish has vowel harmony, which means that you match up the vowel of the particle with the last particle of the word before it. It's pretty easy to just gloss over in conversation, because I seem to subconsiously harmonize the vowels, but when I'm writing, I always have to stop and think about which vowels are linked.
Turkish is also a case language, which means that the subject and object of the verb in a sentence are indicated, so that word order doesn't matter as much (English isn't a case language, but Latin is). There is a "preferred" word order (basically subject-object-verb, at least from what I've learnt so far), but it's ok if you don't say it correctly, which is great for me.
Turkish is also an agglutinative language, as Marcus pointed out (English isn't an agglutinative language, but Finnish is). This makes stringing sentences together...interesting, for me. It also makes for some really, really long words. I've only learned present-tense conjugations so far, but they seem designed to make every verb at least 8 or so letters long. For example, "bilmek," or "to know," is conjugated in the first-person-singular present tense as "biliyorum" (I know). Negating is pretty simple; you just add an "m" in the middle, for example to make "bilmiyorum," or "I don't know." I've been using the phrase "bilmiyorum Türkçe" a whole heck of a lot recently. So far, the agglutination hasn't been too much of a big deal for me, because I don't know enough structure to string together megawords, but my Turkish teacher did give us a longer Turkish word during a discussion we had about word lengths; it sort of makes me a bit nervous about what I'll learn next, grammar-wise: it's çekoslavakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmisiniz. You'll have to imagine most of the "i"s without dots, and the middle "s" with a line through it, because I can't type those letters on this keyboard. The word is a full question, and doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it literally means "Are you one of the people who we couldn't make Czechoslovakian?"
One of the easier things about Turkish is the structure of related words. If you want to say that someone does something, you append "-cu" or one of its vowel-harmony variants to the noun. For example, "futbol" is soccer, so "futbolcu" is soccer player. Possession is similarly easy, you just append "-im" (for "my") or a variant to the word, for example "defter" is notebook, so "defterim" is my notebook.
I'm really enjoying learning Turkish so far. It's not anything like English, so I can't use English as a crutch as you can with Romance languages; even the cognates don't always sound like they're from the same word ("bilardo" is billiards, but I'd never have guessed it). Turkish is a very logical language, with almost no irregular verbs so far, which is nice.
In other news here in Turkey, it's been snowing here all weekend, but not half as much as I hear it's snowed in Boston. The difference is that they still don't plow here, so I had to wade through a foot of wet slush to return a book to the library today. I spent the rest of the day comfortably ensconced in my dorm, reading, surfing the web, talking with other exchange students, and making dinner with some other American students (it was pasta with a fesh-tomato-based sauce; I've made this 4 times with exchange students, and am fully convinced that this must be the one dish that every college kid worth their salt can make and likes to make). Next weekend, I believe I'll be in Cappadocia, although I haven't signed up for the trip yet; it should be fun, and it'll be nice to get out of Ankara. On Thursday and Friday, I don't have classes, so I think I'm going to try and find the pazaar in Maltepe (a region of Ankara), which is supposed to be the biggest pazaar in Ankara; it'll be an adventure, as I'll get to take the Metro system (subway) to get there.
Well, that's about it for now, so I'll just leave you all with one of the longest words in Turkish: Muvaffakiyetsizlestiricilestiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmissinizcesine. It means "acting like you're one of those people who support bad manners," and I have no clue when you'd actually want to use it. But it's fun, nonetheless. Hope I wasn't too confusing with the Turkish grammar rambling,
'Til later,
-R
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Class!
Hey everyone!
This week was the first week of class here at METU. I was reeeally looking forward to it; it's been like 7 or 8 weeks since my last classes at BU. My classes seem pretty interesting, I've been adding and dropping a few, to get a better schedule with better classes, and I think I'll end up with:
Intensive Turkish
Contemporary Turkey
Political Economy of Globalisation
Human Rights in World Politics
Museology
Intro to Foreign Policy Analysis (I might drop this)
Advanced Communications in IR (I'm probably going to add this)
I've been able to find all of my IR classes pretty easily; it's slightly a pain to walk to the IR building, since it's 2 miles from my dorm and much of the trek entails wading through a good 3 or 4 inches of slush-water, but the building itself is gorgeous, all marble and modern, with really comfortable lecture rooms and seminar rooms. It kind of reminds me of SMG back at BU. My other classes, though, have been interesting. I originally signed up for Rural Sociology, and I spent over an hour trying to find the darn classroom. Never did find it. I asked the Sociology department secretary for help, but she didn't know English, so I asked some random people about the room number, and got 3 different answers as to where it was. I found out later that it was a required course for Socoilogy majors at METU, and that it met twice a week at 9, instead of once, so I dropped it in favor of Museology, which I also got lost trying to find. This time, though, I'd learnt enough Turkish to ask the History Department secretary "Sinif 412 oda nerede?" which is, "what room is class 412 in?"; it didn't help much, though, because the room had a name, not a number. When I finally found room "masada izdemir" (or something like that), it was in the basement of the Library. I still can't believe I found it.
Classes here are a bit different than classes back home. They still have 3 hours of class a week, but instead of having an hour on Monday, one on Wednesday, and one on Friday, for example, they have a big three hour bloc, one day a week. It's kind of nice, as I have no classes on Thursdays or Fridays, so I can travel, shop, or do pretty much anything. 3 hours at a stretch does get a little long, though, so the professors usually give smoke breaks either 2 hours in or 1 and 2 hours in, thank goodness.
I've been fairly relieved at my professors' English ability so far. Although METU is an English-speaking university, most people there, including the professors, are more comfortable in Turkish. I have exchange friends here who had classes where the professor simply couldn't hold class in English when asked to; they had to drop the class. Apparently, that happens more in introductory, required courses. I'm pretty lucky: I walked in to my first class Monday morning, and the professor was new, just in from London, so he speaks perfect British English. My other professors are less fluent, but still really understandable.
Well, that's about all I can update for now,
Take care,
-R
This week was the first week of class here at METU. I was reeeally looking forward to it; it's been like 7 or 8 weeks since my last classes at BU. My classes seem pretty interesting, I've been adding and dropping a few, to get a better schedule with better classes, and I think I'll end up with:
Intensive Turkish
Contemporary Turkey
Political Economy of Globalisation
Human Rights in World Politics
Museology
Intro to Foreign Policy Analysis (I might drop this)
Advanced Communications in IR (I'm probably going to add this)
I've been able to find all of my IR classes pretty easily; it's slightly a pain to walk to the IR building, since it's 2 miles from my dorm and much of the trek entails wading through a good 3 or 4 inches of slush-water, but the building itself is gorgeous, all marble and modern, with really comfortable lecture rooms and seminar rooms. It kind of reminds me of SMG back at BU. My other classes, though, have been interesting. I originally signed up for Rural Sociology, and I spent over an hour trying to find the darn classroom. Never did find it. I asked the Sociology department secretary for help, but she didn't know English, so I asked some random people about the room number, and got 3 different answers as to where it was. I found out later that it was a required course for Socoilogy majors at METU, and that it met twice a week at 9, instead of once, so I dropped it in favor of Museology, which I also got lost trying to find. This time, though, I'd learnt enough Turkish to ask the History Department secretary "Sinif 412 oda nerede?" which is, "what room is class 412 in?"; it didn't help much, though, because the room had a name, not a number. When I finally found room "masada izdemir" (or something like that), it was in the basement of the Library. I still can't believe I found it.
Classes here are a bit different than classes back home. They still have 3 hours of class a week, but instead of having an hour on Monday, one on Wednesday, and one on Friday, for example, they have a big three hour bloc, one day a week. It's kind of nice, as I have no classes on Thursdays or Fridays, so I can travel, shop, or do pretty much anything. 3 hours at a stretch does get a little long, though, so the professors usually give smoke breaks either 2 hours in or 1 and 2 hours in, thank goodness.
I've been fairly relieved at my professors' English ability so far. Although METU is an English-speaking university, most people there, including the professors, are more comfortable in Turkish. I have exchange friends here who had classes where the professor simply couldn't hold class in English when asked to; they had to drop the class. Apparently, that happens more in introductory, required courses. I'm pretty lucky: I walked in to my first class Monday morning, and the professor was new, just in from London, so he speaks perfect British English. My other professors are less fluent, but still really understandable.
Well, that's about all I can update for now,
Take care,
-R
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Photos
This is my room at METU: it's cozy and really nice. My side's the right side.
This is the biggest mosque in Ankara. It's quite cool; I passed it while I was wandering the city.
These are gece kondurs, which I wrote about in my last post. There are literally hhundreds of thousands of them in pockets all around the city. As a side note, most of the buildings are candy-colored, brights pinks and yellows and greens, etc. It's nice, because the city would otherwise be insurmountably gray.My camera works again (apparently you can't scrimp on batteries and get the cheap ones, because then your camera will pretty much die), so I've finally taken a few pictures. Not many, but at least there are Turkish photos on my memory card. So, to start things off, here's a few from the last few days (above).
Take care,
-R
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Gece Kondur
Hey everyone,
Today, I visited the Citadel, or Castle: an ancient fortress in the middle and on the top of the city. Ankara has an air pollution problem, especially in winter, so we couldn't see too horribly far, but it was really gorgeous: spread out beneath the citadel in all directions were huge areas of gece kondurs. These, in my opinion, are one of the really cool things about Turkey: Turkish law says that if you erect four walls and a roof in the course of one night on government land, it's legally yours, and you can stay, hence the name "gece kondur," or "built overnight." A lot of internal immigrants from outlying villages did that when they moved to the city to find work, so there's maybe a million or so people living in these quasi-squatter residences. It's really something to walk around in the gece kondurs: it's a delightful mishmash of architecture, and a maze of narrow, sloping streets. Little kids are everywhere, and the shops in the area seem very relaxed. As my group was walking through on our way down from the citadel, it was teatime, and there was a man with a tray full of individual tea cups, all poured and ready, making his way among the merchants. Most of the shops had their wares displayed on the roadside in front of their windows, and other vendors wove their way through the street, hawking shoe sole inserts, jewelry, and fresh simits (simits are these wonderful thin round pastries, named after the sesame seeds they're coated with and the sesame seed jam they're baked with; they're somewhere between a donut and a bagel). It was all so timeless (well, maybe not the shoe sole inserts), and yet modern at the same time.
Well, I think I might go find some government land, put up four walls and a roof and beome a Turkish homeowner. Anyone fancy a vacation home in Ankara?
-R
Today, I visited the Citadel, or Castle: an ancient fortress in the middle and on the top of the city. Ankara has an air pollution problem, especially in winter, so we couldn't see too horribly far, but it was really gorgeous: spread out beneath the citadel in all directions were huge areas of gece kondurs. These, in my opinion, are one of the really cool things about Turkey: Turkish law says that if you erect four walls and a roof in the course of one night on government land, it's legally yours, and you can stay, hence the name "gece kondur," or "built overnight." A lot of internal immigrants from outlying villages did that when they moved to the city to find work, so there's maybe a million or so people living in these quasi-squatter residences. It's really something to walk around in the gece kondurs: it's a delightful mishmash of architecture, and a maze of narrow, sloping streets. Little kids are everywhere, and the shops in the area seem very relaxed. As my group was walking through on our way down from the citadel, it was teatime, and there was a man with a tray full of individual tea cups, all poured and ready, making his way among the merchants. Most of the shops had their wares displayed on the roadside in front of their windows, and other vendors wove their way through the street, hawking shoe sole inserts, jewelry, and fresh simits (simits are these wonderful thin round pastries, named after the sesame seeds they're coated with and the sesame seed jam they're baked with; they're somewhere between a donut and a bagel). It was all so timeless (well, maybe not the shoe sole inserts), and yet modern at the same time.
Well, I think I might go find some government land, put up four walls and a roof and beome a Turkish homeowner. Anyone fancy a vacation home in Ankara?
-R
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Winter
Hello, everyone!
This is just a quick update, as I have a few extra minutes. It is so snowy here, it's incredible. There's currently over a foot of snow; it stopped for a bit last night, but picked right up this morning. They handle the snow very differently here: it's been snowing almost nonstop since I arrıved, but they just bothered to plow a few roads last nıght. Most roads on campus aren't plowed, and none of the sidewalks are; my socks are soaked. Today, on the way back to my dorm, we came upon some students sledding on plastic bags (I don't know that they have sleds), and we joined in. It was a lot of fun, and definitely not something that I thought I'd be doing in Turkey. The weather is a little dangerous, though: they don't shovel sıdewalks, so the snow melts a bıt, freezes, and ın covered by more snow. This makes outdoor steps more than a little interesting; there are also 40-degree ramps all over that take the place of stairs. It's more than a bit difficult to walk up a ramp in a snowstorm wıth several inches already coating the inch of ice coating the ramp: I have a black and blue knee to show for my efforts to do that Monday night. Other than that, the weather has been unexpected, but pretty fun; it reminds me a bit of wınter in Minnesota.
-R
This is just a quick update, as I have a few extra minutes. It is so snowy here, it's incredible. There's currently over a foot of snow; it stopped for a bit last night, but picked right up this morning. They handle the snow very differently here: it's been snowing almost nonstop since I arrıved, but they just bothered to plow a few roads last nıght. Most roads on campus aren't plowed, and none of the sidewalks are; my socks are soaked. Today, on the way back to my dorm, we came upon some students sledding on plastic bags (I don't know that they have sleds), and we joined in. It was a lot of fun, and definitely not something that I thought I'd be doing in Turkey. The weather is a little dangerous, though: they don't shovel sıdewalks, so the snow melts a bıt, freezes, and ın covered by more snow. This makes outdoor steps more than a little interesting; there are also 40-degree ramps all over that take the place of stairs. It's more than a bit difficult to walk up a ramp in a snowstorm wıth several inches already coating the inch of ice coating the ramp: I have a black and blue knee to show for my efforts to do that Monday night. Other than that, the weather has been unexpected, but pretty fun; it reminds me a bit of wınter in Minnesota.
-R
Monday, January 23, 2006
I'm Here!
Hi everyone;
I'll keep this short, as i'ts 1AM here and I'm writing on a Turkish keyboard (fairly confusing/exasperating), but I figured I'd let'ch'all know that I'm here in Ankara. I arrived yesterday at about 3 pm local time, or 7 am Minnesota time. So far, it's very exciting/fascinating; the campus is interesting, it's pretty wooded, and it's maybe 20 minutes from downtown Ankara. The biggest struggle I've had as of yet is the food: it seems as though everything is made smothered in cheese, even breakfast foods. I had some sort of dinner today that's apparently a Turkish favorite; it was a baked potato split down the center, with the insides scraped out and mixed with something, like mashed potatoes. The mashed stuff was then put back into the potato and topped with pork sausage slices, pickle slices, jalapeno peppers, olive slices, onions, peas, corn, ketchup, and mayonnaise (it normally also has cheese, as well). It was pretty interesting.
Well, I'll write more when my wireless is up and running, so I don't have to use these darn Turkish ones,
-R
I'll keep this short, as i'ts 1AM here and I'm writing on a Turkish keyboard (fairly confusing/exasperating), but I figured I'd let'ch'all know that I'm here in Ankara. I arrived yesterday at about 3 pm local time, or 7 am Minnesota time. So far, it's very exciting/fascinating; the campus is interesting, it's pretty wooded, and it's maybe 20 minutes from downtown Ankara. The biggest struggle I've had as of yet is the food: it seems as though everything is made smothered in cheese, even breakfast foods. I had some sort of dinner today that's apparently a Turkish favorite; it was a baked potato split down the center, with the insides scraped out and mixed with something, like mashed potatoes. The mashed stuff was then put back into the potato and topped with pork sausage slices, pickle slices, jalapeno peppers, olive slices, onions, peas, corn, ketchup, and mayonnaise (it normally also has cheese, as well). It was pretty interesting.
Well, I'll write more when my wireless is up and running, so I don't have to use these darn Turkish ones,
-R
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Updates!
Merhaba!
I'm slowly getting ready for Turkey; I have nothing packed, but I've made several packing lists. I've been reading a lot of travel books and books on Turkey, and I've been slowly working through my Turkish phrasebook. A few weeks ago, I was assigned my housing and my roommate: I'll be living in one of the EBI dorms, which means I'll have ethernet access in my room and a kitchenette, with a student lounge and a breakfast bar/cafe on the first floor. My roommate is Turkish, from a region called Pamukkale, and she seems really nice. I went to the Travel Clinic last week and got my Hepatitis A, Typhoid, and Influenza innoculations, along with a strict lecture on staying away from birds. I've been following the bird flu developments in Turkey quite keenly; it should be interesting to be over there as they're dealing with bird flu, but I hope it doesn't get too much worse: I don't think I'll be in any personal danger from bird flu, as I'm not going anywhere near any bird that's not fully cooked, but if a large outbreak results in mass panic or disorder, or travel restrictions, or instability, it would be interesting but not all that safe. At the moment, it looks like bird flu won't be horribly widespread in Turkey, knock on wood.
At the moment, I'm just trying to figure out what I'm bringing and how I'll pack it; I can bring 2 suitcases and a carry-on, but I have no idea how much stuff I should bring. I'm sure I'll probably manage to bring too much, and to forget something crucial back in Minnesota.
Looking ahead, I leave for Ankara at 3:20 next Saturday, and I'll arrive in Ankara at 3 on Sunday (or 7AM Minnesota time), where I'll be met at the airport by a student guide. I'll then spend two weeks in orientation, learning Turkish, learning about Turkey, registering for classes, and probably taking a trip to Cappadocia; classes don't begin 'til February 8. I'm getting really excited, and in the meantime, email or comment if you have any questions, comments, warnings, advice, or jokes about Turkey! I'll post more contact info once I get to Turkey; I won't know my address 'til I get there. 'Til later,
-R
I'm slowly getting ready for Turkey; I have nothing packed, but I've made several packing lists. I've been reading a lot of travel books and books on Turkey, and I've been slowly working through my Turkish phrasebook. A few weeks ago, I was assigned my housing and my roommate: I'll be living in one of the EBI dorms, which means I'll have ethernet access in my room and a kitchenette, with a student lounge and a breakfast bar/cafe on the first floor. My roommate is Turkish, from a region called Pamukkale, and she seems really nice. I went to the Travel Clinic last week and got my Hepatitis A, Typhoid, and Influenza innoculations, along with a strict lecture on staying away from birds. I've been following the bird flu developments in Turkey quite keenly; it should be interesting to be over there as they're dealing with bird flu, but I hope it doesn't get too much worse: I don't think I'll be in any personal danger from bird flu, as I'm not going anywhere near any bird that's not fully cooked, but if a large outbreak results in mass panic or disorder, or travel restrictions, or instability, it would be interesting but not all that safe. At the moment, it looks like bird flu won't be horribly widespread in Turkey, knock on wood.
At the moment, I'm just trying to figure out what I'm bringing and how I'll pack it; I can bring 2 suitcases and a carry-on, but I have no idea how much stuff I should bring. I'm sure I'll probably manage to bring too much, and to forget something crucial back in Minnesota.
Looking ahead, I leave for Ankara at 3:20 next Saturday, and I'll arrive in Ankara at 3 on Sunday (or 7AM Minnesota time), where I'll be met at the airport by a student guide. I'll then spend two weeks in orientation, learning Turkish, learning about Turkey, registering for classes, and probably taking a trip to Cappadocia; classes don't begin 'til February 8. I'm getting really excited, and in the meantime, email or comment if you have any questions, comments, warnings, advice, or jokes about Turkey! I'll post more contact info once I get to Turkey; I won't know my address 'til I get there. 'Til later,
-R
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