Category Archives: learning

The final installment of Amy’s story about learning language and learning Turkish. I hope it’s been enriching for all of you. I know it has for me. (Start at the beginning.)

As for English in Turkey, I find it somewhere in the middle of Finland and Brazil. Even though I go to a university where all classes are taught in English, most students are not able to communicate fluently in English. They can read Plato in English, but speaking is another story with them. They learn the basics of English in High school, but most of them had to take a preparatory year at Bogazici University in order to learn English. This late learning may be to blame for their inability to pronounce English words very well. Even though Finnish also does not contain the English sounds of “w” or “th”, they are usually able to pronounce them without a problem. But in my university, most of the professors can’t even pronounce the sounds. Turkey is a bit more self-contained than other European countries, so knowing English is not as imperative as in other places. I find that what Turkey lacks in its English learning is strictness. Most students can get away with bad grammar and pronunciation for years. One attribute that Turkish people have that I believe is admirable, though, is they seem to be much more outgoing in using what little English they know. If they sense that you are foreign, they will almost always switch to English when communicating with you, even if their English is seriously flawed. I find this refreshing, as most people in the world are very hesitant to use languages other than their mother tongue. While Finnish people were obsessed with asking me if their grammar was correct, as it always was, Turkish people don’t really seem to care. They are more interested in communicating than in communicating correctly.
I’ve found English education to be quite uneven in the places I’ve lived in the past five years. Even more, trying to learn so many languages in such a short time, although difficult, has given me a better advantage to comparing the ease with which I learned them. What I have found is that any language, no matter how far from one’s mother tongue, is obtainable if one is pushed to use it for survival’s sake. If only I could follow my own words of wisdom when it came to learning Turkish, all my problems would be solved.

Amy arrives in Turkey in the fall of 2007 to a little different experience. (Cut to the start of Amy’s journey here.)

Now I am in Turkey and I have had a completely different experience once again. First of all, I’m having a very difficult time learning Turkish. I am in “Turkish for foreigner’s” classes at Bogazici University, but I continue to use English in communicating with my friends, boyfriend, and professors. My university is taught in English, so I don’t have the opportunity at school to use Turkish very much. Also, Bogazici is a very difficult university, and staying on top of my school work is my number one priority. With so little time to devote to Turkish, I feel silly trying to use what little I know. I’m in an intermediate Turkish class, but I find understanding conversations around me extremely difficult. I know from experience that the only way to learn to understand is to learn to speak. Maybe somewhere along the way I picked up a bit of “Finnishness”, because I am extremely reluctant to use what Turkish I do know. I want it to be absolutely perfect before I attempt it, which is silly because I know from my time in Brazil that people are not looking for perfect grammar from a foreigner. It’s so much easier to take the easy way out and duck into the familiar territory of English. All of my roommates are Turkish, but they communicate in English with me. It’s hard, once the routine of speaking English in a relationship is established, to undo it. I’ve come to a point where I know I need to just take the dive into Turkish. My lack of Turkish has put a rift between me and Turks as well as between me and Turkey. I know language and culture cannot be separated. Only when you know one can you truly know the other. However, it’s those first steps that I’m afraid of. You would never know when you see me so afraid to speak Turkish that I am tri-lingual!

Amy gives language learning a second shot… this time in Brazil, with a little different experience. (read the start of her story here)

In 2005 I joined the Rotary exchange bandwagon once again, this time to an extremely small town in south eastern Brazil called Piumhi. It could not have been a more different experience from my experience in Finland. Within 3 months I was communicating well in Portuguese. After 7 months I was living, breathing, dreaming, reading, writing, and speaking Portuguese as if I was born doing so. My weekly conversations in English to my mother in America became more and more difficult as my English deteriorated as I used it less and less.
One thing I can attribute this fast learning to was the fact that English education in Brazil is seriously lacking. I HAD to learn Portuguese because there was no other way to communicate. Few Brazilians travel outside of Brazil, so knowing English is usually a luxury that is pushed aside in favor of other, more practical learning. I lived with 4 host sisters who all went to a private high school, so their English should have been better than it was. I’ll never forget trying to help the youngest sister with her English homework. She was 12 and had been taking English lessons at school for 4 years, but when I asked her what “nos” was in English, she had no clue. I couldn’t believe that after 4 years of English class she didn’t know the word “we”.
In these cases, the difference in English was attributed to two things: the need to learn and the quality of learning. In Finland, quality public education is offered to everyone, whereas in Brazil, private lessons are the only answer to wanting to learn English, and few families can afford that option.

So why do the Fins speak such good English? Amy explains here. Read the first part of Amy’s story here.

One of the reasons I have for explaining this is that Finnish is only spoken by 5 million people in the world. Finland is not self sufficient in business and relies heavily on foreign trade and business. English is not just an asset there, it is an absolute necessity. Another reason to explain Finns unusual adeptness would be their perfectionism. One of the first words used to describe Finland by anyone who has been there is “order”. Everything in Finland works like clockwork, from their bus and train system to their amazingly clean nature and streets. Finns are extremely dependable and expect the same from others. The idea that a foreigner would try to converse with them and they might not be able to flawlessly communicate back is unacceptable to them. In my English classes at my Finnish high school I saw first-hand the strictness of teachers in emphasizing not just communication, but FLAWLESS communication. Of course, after years and years of being corrected over and over again on their pronunciation and grammar, many are a bit shy to show off their skills. Many times I would approach someone and ask “Do you speak English?” (knowing of course it was a pointless, though polite, question). The answer would usually be either “No, I do not speak English” or “I’m so sorry my English is not very good”. Note of course the flawless grammar in their denial. And of course there was the occasional person who would approach me with a question like “Amy, could you please explain to me the correct usage of the word “alacrity?” to which my answer would usually be something like “Alacra what?”