A few days ago I started talking about a potential project to learn Turkish (or rather, stop working on my already good reading skills and move on to improving my speaking) in a concentrated way over a relatively short period of time, and in public for all to see and poke fun at. So far there has been an overwhelmingly positive response to this idea, and chances are I’m going to do it. This might require significant donations of vodka, though, to get me over the initial hurdle.
Jake over at A Foreign Perspective is an American who moved to Turkey at roughly the same time I did, and yet unlike me his spoken Turkish is (apparently) quite good. He lives in Adana, which is a slightly different context from life here in Antalya. Adana, unlike Antalya, is not a particular tourist destination, which could be looked at in a couple of different ways— on one hand, it must be difficult and intimidating in such a very Turkish city to be dropped in at the deep end and have to speak Turkish without a safety net right from the beginning, but on the other hand, I’ve found from living in Antalya that if you do have people around you who speak English, although you might feel more comfortable, you don’t have any incentive to learn Turkish (especially since everyone in a tourist city is keen to develop their English).
So it’s hard to say which situation is more difficult. I have a friend from England here in Antalya who started out living in Adana for three years, and although she said she spent the first six weeks in tears because she couldn’t communicate with anyone, after that her learning gained momentum and she was functionally independent within a few months. She said she doesn’t think it would have ever happened if she’d lived in Antalya from the beginning. Her opinion is that the best thing for me to do is go stay with a large family in a Turkish mountain village for a few months. She swears I’ll come back fluent. Perhaps that’s true, but my guess is we’ll never find out. My personal situation right now is not such that I would just disappear into the mountains for any significant period, unless someone would pay me to do so (any takers? Didn’t think so).
Getting back to Jake, what has caught my interest most recently in his blog is a continuing series of posts detailing his experiences of learning Turkish and describing the methods he has used to get where he is. I found the articles interesting and helpful, and I think most of it applies across the board, regardless of which language you’re trying to learn. I’m hoping to take a lot of his suggestions and use them in my own situation.
Or maybe I’ll take my English friend’s suggestion and head for the mountains. Link