Bebek

Learning a new language is never exactly the easiest thing to do, especially as you get older. I, personally, love learning new languages, and when I take a new language I usually do pretty well in it. In fact, foreign language classes have always been my favorite and best classes. That’s just it though, I typically learn a new language in a classroom with hours of practice, teaching, repetition, seeing, hearing, speaking, homework, papers, and tests. I’m currently trying to learn Turkish without the help of a classroom, and even though I’m in Turkey and I am constantly surrounded by the language, it’s taking longer than usual for the words and sounds to stick in my memory. I’ve been here a month now, and I’m just now starting to pick up some phrases and whatnot. I’ve tried studying on my own but it’s hard to do so with out an instructor’s help. It’s extremely frustrating at times because I am trying to learn, but I really need a classroom. Right now, I feel like the way that I am learning is similar to a baby. I’m constantly listening, trying to pick out the different sounds, differentiating words, even watching as they point out and mime things to help me understand. Many things that I’m learning are not because of a book but rather because I’ve heard them so many times over and over again and the like. Even then there are many things that perhaps I can understand when said, but I won’t know how to respond or say something that I need to say. It takes a baby about a year to start learning little words and then years to “master” it’s mother tongue. I say “master” in quotations because most adults don’t even know the proper grammar of their language. To learn that takes even more years of studying. I really wish that my school offered a Turkish class; things would be so much easier because once I have the elementary classes down it’s much easier to pick up the language and build my vocabulary. In the mean time, I will continue to struggle and feel like a baby with this language.