How much Turkish did I learn in 7 months? Traveling to Turkey

Today, I want to talk about language and travel with specific reference to my recent trip to Turkey, the preparation that I made before going there, how I did, and I'm going to show you some pictures and some videos of my visit to Turkey. So language learning is about exploring. Travel is about exploring.

It's about discovering new places. Just as learning languages is about discovering new cultures, new languages, and new people. And so the two are often connected.

And, uh, I have had the experience that my plan to visit a country has been a major motivator in getting me to learn the language, or at least to study the language. I've often felt that if you don't prepare properly, if you just go to a country in the hope that somehow you'll pick up the language, That's not so successful. I was not successful when I was in Vietnam because I did too little preparation.

And even for Croatian, which was, you know, a Slavic language, which I already had, I had some Slavic languages. I didn't do enough preparation. I wasn't able to use it at all.

Or very, very little. So let's get back to Turkish. I mentioned before that back in 2019 I said I know too little about, call it the Middle East, call it Central Asia, call it that part of the world, of which sort of Constantinople, or Istanbul rather, has historically been a hub, a center, connecting the Arab world, the Greek world, The Turkish world, the Persian world, and a whole lot more, as I discovered on my visit.

So, I started with Arabic, and then Persian, and then Turkish, but then I decided that because Persian and Arabic were so much more difficult because of the writing system, I dropped Turkish, and I focused on Arabic and Persian for the last five years, and with, I would say, limited success, although a great deal of success. Enjoyment. So back in June, my wife and I decided we're going to visit Turkey.

I said, I'm going to crank up my Turkish. So you can see from my statistics that I spent three months on Turkish back in 2019. And then I did essentially nothing.

And starting in June, I picked it up. So I did four months of relatively intense, Turkish learning. One, two, three hours a day, some days.

Lots of listening and reading. I will tell you exactly what I did, and then I will tell you the results. When I picked up my Turkish again, the first thing I did was to go back to my mini stories, which had been a major part of my learning back five years ago, to try and get back in the language.

And the mini stories are always there, as I always call it, like my gym. You know, no matter how long it's been since I last used the language, I can go there, And have a workout and somehow get back to where I was in the language. So I did that again, starting in June.

I went back to the mini stories, kind of refreshed, got myself to where I was before. I had a level of about 8, 000 words at that time. I said, I want to get to 35, 000 words in Turkish.

That's my goal in order to be able to have any success when I'm in Turkey. Bear in mind that there are so many different forms of, especially verbs in Turkish that this very high number. Doesn't mean that I have this enormous vocabulary in Turkish, but it is an indicator.

It is a bit of a milestone. I said, that's my goal. I want to get to 35, 000 words, the way we count them, at length.

So, in an initial period, once I left the many stories, I found some sort of lower intermediate material. In our library at LingQ, and there is lots, and I would advise you in any language at LingQ, use the search feature in the library, and you will discover lots of interesting material. And I was able to do that, and that got me up to a certain point.

However, When we're learning a language, it's fun to find new, fresh, interesting material that we choose. And that's where I eventually got motivated to find myself some audiobooks and ebooks. I discovered a website called Storytel, which apparently is based in Sweden.

And they focus on a number of languages and they provide You'll see when I was in Bodrum in Turkey, there was even a taxi advertising Storytel. And so they have quite a large library in Turkish. I don't know the scope of their library in other languages, but I focused in on history.

I typed in, you know, tarih in Turkish to see what there was. I discovered a very prolific Turkish historian called Hilber Ortaylı, who has written so many books on so many different subjects, on Istanbul, on traveling around Turkey, on the relationship between Europe and Turkey, lots of stuff. I have no idea how authoritative he is, I know he's quite popular, but it's real Turkish material and a subject of interest to me.

And what I did there was, you can only listen to The audio book in the app and for the text, the ebook, I would, uh, capture a screenshot in my iPad. And I found the best way then to get that into Link as a lesson was to go to ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to convert that JPEG into text, which comes out fairly quickly. And then I have something that I can work on in Link.

So I spent a lot of time doing that. Learning a lot about Turkish history. I eventually bought the books that I was using on, you know, storytelling.

Because I like to hold paper books. But reading the paper books remained difficult. And in another video, I will talk about this whole issue of how to connect real books with audio, with digital text.

And in fact, I'll be looking for input from people on what the best ways are to do all of this. Now, if I'm going to go to Turkey, I'm going to want to speak. That means I have to prepare for speaking.

So, in the past, where I was somewhat successful, or quite successful, in Czech, in Romanian, in Greek, I made sure that I had a lot of online tutor sessions. before going. So here we have two excellent tutors at LingQ, Baha and Tunjay.

And I had two sessions with each of them per week. So a total of four sessions for the last period. Again, you'll see that in my statistics at LingQ.

I was up to 10 or 11 hours a week of speaking, which does a number of things. It, it triggers curiosity, it triggers awareness, it helps you search for words. But at the same time, I continued my intensive input activities.

So now, how did it go in Turkey? Well, first of all, Turkey is a fascinating country. It's at the crossroads.

And you become aware when you visit, uh, Istanbul, which was once Constantinople, which was once the second Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire for 300 years, which then became the capital of what the citizens continued to call Rome, citizens of the Byzantine Empire, but which was subsequently, I think in the 18th century or the 19th century, called the Byzantine Empire, but which to the people who lived there was still Rome. Rome, which spoke Greek, which spoke Aramaic, which spoke different languages. Soon after arriving, we went to this museum on Hagia Sophia, Hagia Sophia, which described this evolution in Turkey from pre Christian to Christian to, you know, the Byzantine Empire.

riots, whatever. And then the, uh, Crusaders who came and destroyed Hagia Sophia or destroyed much of Constantinople because they were more interested in looting than in saving Jerusalem. And then eventually when Constantinople was conquered by the Turks, the Ottoman Empire, the name wasn't to change immediately to Istanbul.

It was Constantinia or something for a long time, and eventually it became Constantinople. Istanbul somewhat later. Things that I learned from my reading of books written by Ilbert Ortalya.

So it was fascinating. You're there, and we stayed at a hotel where we overlooked the Blue Mosque, this magnificent structure built by Sultan Ahmet, and we were in an area of Istanbul where there are a lot of mosques. These historical monuments, column buildings, structures, like, well, first of all, you're right on the Hippodrome, which was the center of the city, and you're looking at the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and so forth.

So, it's a great area to be in. You're right by the water because there you are on the European side, across the water is the Asian side. Quite an arbitrary division.

It's the city, it's one city. And down by the water, you see this tremendous activity of boats that are either crisscrossing, The Bosphorus or we went on a tour for 150 lira. You get a tour of the Bosphorus and see wonderful structures, other palaces, uh, residential homes and so forth and so on.

Fascinating, just color and shops selling every manner of, you know, spices and, uh, colorful, you know, clothing. And everything about Turkey is colorful and, and an abundance of things that are available for sale. It's a, It's a feast for the eyes.

But while in Turkey, and I'll explain, we were in Istanbul, we went to Cappadocia, we were in Bodrum, which is in the south, or at least the west on the, the Aegean. So I suddenly discovered that I couldn't, when traveling with my wife or participating in these tours, I can't just plug my ears with my ears. Airpods and listen to Turkish, nor do I have a lot of opportunity to speak, to have some, and I'll get into that.

So in a way, it can be said that my Turkish declined, or at least I was using my Turkish paradoxically in a way less while there than when I was in Vancouver, where I could easily spend two hours a day listening to Turkish, where four hours a week I would speak Turkish. However, whenever I was able to use the Turkish, Whenever I spoke to someone in Turkish, the reaction was so positive. It was a delightful feeling to generate sort of an interest in you and a sense of friendliness simply because you spoke their language and they were curious as to why would you want to learn this language and how do you go about doing it and a lot of sort of goodwill generated by the mere fact that I spoke Turkish.

So that was the positive, even though I can't say that I improved my Turkish tremendously. However, I can say that the effort that I put in preparing, it got me to a level where. You know, I felt I could get myself out of trouble if I got into trouble, I felt comfortable, I could read everything around me, I could kind of get my meaning across in a limited sense, but not have an intellectual discussion on something.

And yet at the same time, because my pronunciation is quite good, I could easily get into trouble because I could say something and then the person would come back in rapid fire Turkish and I wouldn't understand what they were saying. I will give you a sampling of my Turkish before leaving, parts of an interview that I had with my tutor, Tutor Baha. Central Asia is such an important region in world history.

I understand. Like… three thousand years ago, there was an important early civilization in that area, with cities. Central Asia is, you know, central.

From India, from Greece, from China, from Arabic, from Iran… there’s influence from everywhere. Yes, in the middle of everything. In the middle of everything.

Unfortunately, in Canada, at school, they learn that Europe or North America is the center of the world. In Turkey… they learn that Turkey and the world are in the middle. But everywhere is the centre.

That's why we need to know them. So who are the Turks? Turkish history.

Did you learn Turkish history at school? Not at school. There is nothing about Turkish history.

But in European history, the Ottoman Army was in Vienna. There was a war with Poland, Jan Sobieski. The furthest point reached by the Ottoman army.

And also, a conversation that I had with the hotel manager at this wonderful hotel, Haci Bayram, highly recommended, a wonderful Turkish breakfast right there overlooking the sea. The, uh, Blue Mosque. And so you get a sense that I am able to communicate to some extent, but there was no dramatic improvement in my Turkish speaking ability or comprehension.

This hotel, Hacı Bayram, Sultan Ahmet, in Istanbul is very good, very beautiful. The service is very good. Everything is comfortable.

Sultan Ahmet is close by, there are restaurants everywhere. People are very, very friendly. the tram goes to Taksim, there’s everything.

Everything. The people are very, uh, very friendly. Thank you very much, Steve.

From two thousand years ago until now, there have been many people, many empires. In Istanbul. A central area, that is, Sultan Ahmet.

However, I felt that I was amply rewarded for the effort that I put in declaring Turkish. One interesting aside, on four different occasions, I met people who follow LingoSteve. The first time was at a restaurant, a hotel restaurant, where the busboy follows me, and he said, Are you, you know, LingoSteve?

And I was so excited, and he took a picture, and unfortunately, I forgot. To take a picture of him at the same time. However, there were three other similar occasions.

One with an American, and you'll see the picture of him. One with a Japanese follower of Negosteep. And one with a follower from Hong Kong who was with a group of other people, again in Cappadocia, and we took a picture together.

So that was kind of fun. So, getting back to then my adventure in Turkey. I was rewarded, but I didn't feel that I was able to improve.

I was also rewarded because I was able to, while being in Turkey, discover so much about that fascinating country. First of all, obviously in Istanbul, where you have such a mixture of peoples. The famous Galata Tower in Istanbul was built by the Genoese, people from Genoa.

Crusaders were there, there's Armenians, Greeks, it's not to mention, of course, the predominant Turkish population there with all the history that's there. But then we flew to Cappadocia, which On the one hand, we went up in the blues. We saw these, uh, fairy like structures where, uh, you know, people live, sort of in caves.

But more than that, we took a tour in that area. Several hours of driving around that area. And we realized, I realized, that I was in an area that I had read about in history.

I had read about Alexander the Great, or Alexander the Great Macedonian, who cut the Gordian Knot. That took place not far away. I have read about Lydia.

I've read about Giza. The Midas touch, the king of Phrygia and those people on the Hittites, the Lydians, the Phrygians, these are Anatolian people who lived in Anatolia before the, uh, uh, Turks arrived. And of course, on the Western edge of Anatolia, there would be pushing with the Greeks who were settling on the Western shores.

And, uh, presumably those Anatolian people were resisting them. And the interesting thing is, The extent to which all of these cultures mix, well, I'll stay with Cappadocia. We visited these underground cities where as many as 20, 000 people apparently lived underground whenever they were invaded by an army of Persians or Mongols or Arabs.

And so you, we were on the crossroads of the movement of people and armies going back thousands of years. And this was driven home to me when after Cappadocia, uh, my wife and I went to Bodrum on the Aegean, which is a lovely resort, mostly. Turkish people.

It's like a Turkish Riviera, uh, lots of shops, uh, lots of seafood restaurants. And it was the Greek city of Halicarnassus. A number of Greek philosophers lived there.

And there's two sort of major, uh, architectural remains there. One is the mausoleum, which was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. But it was a mausoleum to A Anatolian king who subsequently became a, a Persian satrap.

So it was not a mausoleum to a Greek, but it was designed and built by Greeks. Because there was a lot of cultural interaction between the Greeks and these Anatolian people. Similarly, apparently, the amphitheater in Bodrum, at that time, if I'm not mistaken, going by memory, the king of that area was this satrap.

So, again, it's a mixture of Greek culture, Greek architecture, local small nation states, call them, who were under the sway of the Persian empire at different times. So, you have this feeling that you're in this place that has so much history. And, uh, You know, I, I just felt, I love history.

It was wonderful to be in those places. And yet at the same time, it was wonderful to be in Turkey. We went to Turkish Dolmus, which is sort of a form of, you know, public transportation, but somewhat uncomfortable.

But we did all of that and, you know, all told it was just a wonderful experience. So the thought I want to leave you with. Perhaps there's a few here.

Number one, if you are going to go to a country where the language you are learning is spoken, there's a very worthwhile reason for learning a language, it's very motivating, but prepare six months ahead. That's number one. It'll take you six months to get to a level.

where you can benefit. Second of all, I found it difficult to use the language a lot. So to that extent, maybe, you know, there was no dramatic uptick in my capability in Turkish.

That's somewhat different from my experience, for example, with Czech or even with Romanian, because those languages are easier or more similar to languages that I already know. With Turkish, it's a, it's more of an uphill battle. struggle.

And so I didn't see any major improvement. However, so in the short run, maybe I even declined somewhat. But in the long run, to gain this overall sense of the Turkish language, the Turkish history, Turkish culture, having experienced the sights, the sounds, the tastes of Turkey, with a very positive impression of the country, by the way, of the energy of the Turks.

So if there are concentric circles in language learning, the nuts and bolts is the innermost circle. You keep on going back there. To try and drive into your brain the sort of endings and grammatical fine points of the language.

And yet, you're never confident that you're doing that much whenever you're sort of revisiting these grammar points. But, if you do that within the context of lots of input, lots of listening and reading, lots of talking to people, and then you come across these, these, uh, nuts and bolts of the language in different contexts, in a variety of contexts, gradually they start to sink in. So that's the second concentric language.

Circle, but going to the country provided me with a third concentric circle. And that is this overall sort of sense of the environment of the language, the cultural context of a language, the real living, breathing context of a language. And that gives me a level of motivation, a level of understanding, which I feel is going to keep me going with the language, which is going to, in a way that I can't explain, except that I sense that this is the case.

It makes it easier for me to understand the language. It makes it likely that I'll learn the language. faster than if I had ever gone to a country.

So that's what I take away from my visit to Turkey. Again, I say, please prepare ahead of time. And if it's a language that's quite different from one that you already know, you may not see any dramatic improvement, but you'll come away with a sense of the language that is going to keep you on track to eventually achieve your language goals.

Thank you for listening.