After moving to Turkey I realized I did not even know how to say, "How are you?" If I wanted to survive I had to move fast to learn some Turkish Phrases. The two methods I used to learn Turkish my first few challenging weeks there were listening and imitating.
Listening
You would be surprised how many people try to learn the basics of a language by reading something from a book or on the Internet. The fact is, when you were a baby you did not learn to speak your native language after you could read! You heard it over and over for a long time before any words came out of your mouth. And when words did come, you did not have to spend a lot of time analyzing what you were saying!
In the same way, you will learn Turkish phrases fastest by just listening to a phrase over and over until it sinks in. To do that you will need a good set of recordings, of which there are many available. I have the advantage of living in Turkey and hearing Turkish spoken all around me. But I still record spoken Turkish from time to time for listening and learning.
You will be tempted to listen to the recordings as you drive to work or when you are doing something else. That's fine and it will be helpful for you. But the best way to make the phrases stick in your brain is to actually act out the phrase as you hear it! For example, when the recording says, "Hello, my name is..." You can pretend to shake someone's hand. When the recording says, "I would like to order two kebabs," you can turn and act like you are talking to a waiter. The more actions you can perform the more the phrase will stick with you.
Imitating
After those Turkish phrases are drilled into your brain through listening and acting you will start to move into the imitation stage. Just because you are familiar with the sounds does not mean your mouth will cooperate with you in pronouncing them! Don't get discouraged! It is possible! Actually, Turkish is not a very difficult language to speak. There are only a few vowels used in Turkish which we don't use in English.
My little two-year-old, Anna, is a great example of a language imitator. She hears a Turkish word or phrase and she says it right back. She doesn't worry about how funny it sounds in English, because she doesn't know very much English! If you have the same approach as Anna you will learn Turkish quickly. Imitate the sounds you hear.
This whole process really does not take very long. You can listen to a phrase a number of times and imitate it with actions in a couple minutes. The key is to review. You will think you have a phrase memorized but then when you need it it isn't there. If you review the phrases a few days in a row you will be ready to speak Turkish like a pro!
Nick Clawson |
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