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Tag: Turkish

  • Bulgaria’s Public Opinion on the Turkish Minority

    This Tuesday I’m giving a presentation for my course in Public Opinion accompanying my essay on Bulgaria’s public opinion of Turkey. It’s already finished, so I figured I’d put it online. I’m moving from Istanbul to Sofia next week, so it’s double-appropriate 😉

    I stripped it from some of the images, because SlideShare was not displaying them properly (eg. overlapping the text etc.)

    Public Opinion of Turkey in Bulgaria

    View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: bulgaria turkey)

    Slide 10 should say: “Turkish people abuse their position as an ethnic minority to get rights even normal Bulgarians don’t have”.

    Hope you enjoy. More updates soon. Heading into a very busy week.

  • Turkish Language

    Merhaba! Benim adım Bas. Nasılsınız?

    After just two days in Istanbul, I realized why so few Turkish people speak English. If it’s anywhere near as hard for them to learn English, as it is for me to learn Turkish, I can imagine most don’t even want to bother with it if they don’t need it.

    When I came here and didn’t speak one word of Turkish 3 days ago, I longed for Bulgaria where I actually am able to make myself understandable, but told myself to stop being a p***y and stop whining. After all, I didn’t speak any Bulgarian when I arrived there either.

    I arrived at my language course 2.5 days late but I figured I could catch up because I’m a fast learner and I as willing to do the work. When I opened my books at home that day, I was looking at a 100% Turkish book. Not only were the exercises in Turkish, so was the explanation. Looked like catching up will be a bit harder to do, so yesterday when they announced a test for today I decided to aim for something I hardly ever aim for. The middle. Not the top 5%, but just be somewhere in the middle. After all, I had missed 3 days, so I had an excuse for myself.

    The Turkish language is very tough for a Western European. We start sentences with the subject and then the verb, but the Turkish do it differently. The verb has to wait until the end of the sentence, which is very unnatural for us. Imagine going to a bar and ordering a drink. “I want a coke.” In Turkish the structure would be more like “I coke want”, but this of course is still a very simple sentence. It gets incredibly complex, the verbs get many suffixes, quite a few grammar rules are unlike anything I’ve had to deal with, even in Bulgarian.

    However, I really can’t stand being perceived as a tourist (I’d rather be seen as a foreigner who’s living here) and if you speak English and no Turkish at all, you will get ripped off. Constantly. My frustration with this, my impatience, and high demand of myself to understand the language cause me to pick up the language faster than I anticipated and I even don’t mind doing some studying, 😉

    I’m sure within one month my Turkish will be quite okay and I won’t have to fall back on my English, or, since many people don’t understand English, gestures and body language. 🙂

    Gülü gülü!

  • Erasmus Intensive Language Course… To do or not to do?

    Since I’m going to study at a university in Istanbul through the EU’s Erasmus program, I was allowed to sign up for a (free) Turkish language course under the Erasmus Intensive Language Course (EILC) program. I immediately jumped on it, since it had many other advantages, such as free accommodation at the Istanbul University campus.

    Then I found out that my own university, Yeditepe University, would also be offering Turkish language courses. I found out that the EILC courses overlap with the courses I’m supposed to be following at Yeditepe. Plus, they decided to put us into hostels instead of the campus and we’d have to pay for it ourselves. If I’m going to be in a hostel, I’d like to pick it myself, besides… I’d have enough to do anyway, such as finding an apartment, people to live with and getting myself orientated. So I sent them an email.

    EILC Cancellation Email

    Hi,

    I’d like to inform you by this email that I won’t be able to attend the EILC courses starting this August. It’s a great service, but I’m afraid time won’t allow me to attend a considerable number of the classes, so I feel it’s better for me to withdraw.

    Kind regards,
    Bastiaan
    Student at INHOLLAND Amsterdam/Diemen
    The Netherlands

    Apparently they won’t take no for an answer. As you see I sent this email on July 28 and today I got an email back with an acceptance letter dated August 8.

    This got me thinking… Should or shouldn’t I do the EILC? It will offer me an opportunity to meet Erasmus students from all over the city, going to one out of many universities in Istanbul. Maybe I can team up with some people and find an apartment even. Having said that, I’m sure the hostel will evening clocks and things like that and I really enjoy my freedom.

    If any of you have experience with studying abroad, help me out. When I was living in Sofia, Bulgaria, quite a few of my friends were Erasmus students and they had gone through the EILC course… I must say, I wasn’t very impressed with the level of their Bulgarian. A few were ok, but most hadn’t really learned anything. Compared to most of them, my Bulgarian, that I learned on the street, was better. And learning a language on the street is of course much more exciting than learning it in a classroom or protected environment. 😉

    What are your thoughts on this? Should I remind them I cancelled, or just go to the courses?

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