So...

The other night someone called me out on my use of o zaman.

He was like, "What is it in English?" "What do you think you're translating?"

I have asked students and non-native speakers exactly the same questions, when they are using a word in a strange way or simply overusing it. 

In my head, o zaman is the perfect expression, and can be used in the following ways:

Tamam o zaman                        OK then

bla bla blah, o zaman....            bla bla bla, so / therefore / as a result / in that case...

O zaman, senin fikrin nedir?     So, what do you think?

O zaman, ne yapacaksın?          So, what are you going to do?

The first usage is probably ok. The second one could or should be replaced with o yüzden or böyle or a bunch of other options. The third and fourth are apparently just unnecessary. Drop the o zaman altogether.

But then we get into idiolect, the individual use of a language. In English, I say "so" a lot. More than most people. Especially when I am teaching. "Ok, so..." is an expression that students have actually made fun of me for. 

O zaman... at the end of the day, there will of course be some compromise. I will probably continue to use this expression more than most Turkish speakers, and in slightly inappropriate ways, but I'll use it less than I did last week.

Learned last night: NGO, equal, opium

Last night I sat with a new acquaintance and talked about work and religion and philosophy, mostly in simplified Turkish. As we talked, my notebook filled with diagrams and new words.

I like these notes because they take me back to moments in the conversation.

They also remind me that language learning can be messy and chaotic.

I still have no conclusions about any "best way" to learn and retain new vocabulary (or a new language in general), but one thing I'll try now is this: instead of reviewing all the words I learn from interactions with people, I'll extract the ones that I especially want to remember, and spend a moment thinking about them.

Expressions I want to remember from last night

basra körfezi          Persian Gulf

I have no special connection to remember 'basra', but I just spent enough time on the Wikipedia page on the the naming dispute (Arabian Gulf vs. Persian Gulf) while mentally chanting 'basra körfezi' that it should stick.

eşit          equal

They both start with 'e'. eş means 'partner' 'husband' 'spouse' 'wife', which suggests a nice association between relationship partners and equality.

destek          support

I just spent time looking up 'to support' (destek olmak), and that time, combined with a feeling of familiarity, makes me think the word will stick. I'm reminded of the experiment that found that people's brains 'light up' when they see faces that they can later identify; in that initial moment, it seems, your brain decides whether it will remember or not. Destek elicited a 'yes' (though we'll see if I can recall it later).

Note: I would love to find a site that does Turkish etymology for English speakers.

sivil toplam kuruluşu (STK)         NGO

'civil' is easy. toplamak means 'to gather' 'to collect'. kuruluşu can be 'foundation' 'organization'. Hmm... maybe if I remember the acronym (STK–'seh teh kah'). Like, 'stick'. An NGO 'sticks' up for people. That'll do.

imge          image

Too easy.

Haziran (June)         Temmuz (July)

I always confuse these two. Now my method is simple: 'h' comes before 't'. This is the same method for remembering that çarşamba (Wednesday) comes before perşembe (Thursday).

hikâye          story

This word I know, but I need to stop adding a 't' to the end. Something I learned in Arabic?

afyon          opium

We were talking about 'the opiate of the masses'. This is such a great word. My brain definitely lit up with the 'this will be remembered' light. Afyon. Afyon.

bağ          connection

I learned this before, but kept confusing the ending.

samimi          sincere, warm

This came up a few days ago when I was describing my brother. Another nice word.

Enough for now!

Vocabulary from all directions and a question

Hanging out in a village

yavru          baby animal, e.g. lamb
civciv          baby chick (yeah, cutest word ever, pronounced 'jeevjeev')
şam hurma          'sun date'? does anyone know what this is in English?
koyun        sheep
çoban          shepherd
kavun           melon
tohum          seed (also the word for semen/sperm)
yaramaz          naughty, useless (applied to children, in my observations)
gelin          bride
düğün          wedding

Having a phone stalker

bilinmeyen numara          unknown number
açma          don't answer your phone (literally, 'don't open')

At some point during the endless calling, I was played a recording that said that if I wanted to meet, I should answer the phone, and if I didn't want to meet, I should not answer the phone. My stalker was overestimating my Turkish comprehension skills, because it took two listenings to understand, by which point I had apparently already indicated I wanted to meet.

Watching a Turkish dizi (ridiculous soap opera)

öldüren tutku          fatal passion
engelli          with obstacles, difficult
sakin ol          calm down
gerçek masallar          true stories

Watching Turkish news

cinayet          murder
üflemek          to blow out (as in, there was a fire, and it 'blew out' the roof)
çatı          roof

Conversing about politics and the upcoming election

adalet          justice
asıl          foundation, base, source

Totally recognizable from Arabic. e.g. My dad is Canadian, welakin min asıl New Zealand (but originally from New Zealand). A word I use way too much in Turkish is aslında (actually, or 'at the source').

çoğul          majority
oy kullanmak          to vote
kabul etmek          to accept
dernek          association
üye          member
acemi          inexperienced
yolsuzluk          abuse, misuse (literally 'way-without-ness')

This last was used to reference the event on December 17th, when dozens of AK Party officials were arrested for corruption, money laundering, and bribery. I was in Cappadocia that day, and my Turkish friend there bought a stack of newspapers including this:

Question: How to retain all these new words? 

A friend uses a cool vocabulary quiz app... I used to use paper flash cards... I'm open to ideas.

Learned today: prophet, west coast

iletişim          communication

neyle ilgileniyorsun?          what are you interested in?

Cem Evi          worship place for Alevis

hazreti           his/her holiness

peygamber          prophet

batıda deniz kenarı          west coast

kısas          retaliation/reprisal

Talking Politics

With local elections coming up, and some serious political movement at the federal level, I'm finding it necessary to learn some Turkish vocabulary. Hadi, let's review some old and new.

siyaset / politika          politics

(Siyaset is also Arabic for 'politics.' Or asiyasiya? Maybe that's 'political'? Need an Arabic consult).

hükümet          government

devlet          state

(As is devlet hastanesi, 'state hospital'. When I say that in Canada I teach new immigrants, people always ask I'm employed by the devlet.)

il          province

başkent         capital 

(Baş 'head', kent 'town')

başbakan          prime minister

belediye başkanı          mayor

(Belediye is 'municipality' in Turkish. In Arabic, I think it means country or countryside).

darbe          coup d'état

devrim         revolution

tutucu / muhafazakar          conservative

(The second comes from Arabic. One person said it's not commonly used, but the next day another person used it before tutucu.)

milliyetçi           nationalist

anket          survey

That's enough for now. I suspect Turkish politics are always interesting, but the situation is especially intriguing right now, with a Muslim scholar in Pennsylvania apparently initiating corruption busts, a Prime Minister whose new slogan is "Iron Will", and population that experienced a political awakening this summer.

You can get a grasp of the major plot lines from this great article from New York Times Magazine by Suzy Hansen.

Trolls and trolling

A troll is someone who posts something ridiculous online to get a reaction.

Trolling is the verb for doing this. (Convergent words).

But when people say, "Don't feed trolls," (as in, don't respond to that idiot on the message board), they say so with an image of a monster under a bridge, while when they say, "Don't troll," (as in, don't be an idiot and put inflammatory prompts on the message board), they say so with an image of fishing using long lines off the back of a boat. (Divergent images).

Which came first? Trolling before trolls, surely. And then "Don't feed trolls" was a funny leap off the back of the ship to under the bridge. It makes me furrow my eyebrows.

The words come from totally different places, too.

The verb troll comes from Old French troller, a hunting term.

The noun troll comes from Old Norse for a mythological monster.

Nadir

The word is so interesting, and it's come up twice this week.

I asked Afsaneh how to say, "No problem" in Farsi. The answer, though I am surely transcribing it with mistakes, is something like "Moshkeli nadire" (MOSH-KAY-LEE NAD-DEE-RAY). This made easy sense, because both the words are familiar.

"Mafi moshkela" we used to say in Saudi, for "No problem."

"Nadir" is "rare" in Turkish.

Then, yesterday, Robin asked for the opposite of "zenith." He was fishing around for a word that he already knew. "Nadir," I put forward, "but it's an Arabic word, I think." "No, that's it!" And so it is. "Nadir" is English for the direction pointing directly below something. It can also work like "trough" or "bottom." Such words are almost invisible, they are so rarely used. Likewise, the spiderweb connections between languages often go unnoticed.

"Nadir" comes from the Arabic نَظِيرُ السَّمْت, nadhir as-samt, "counterpart to the zenith".

Storch

A word gift from the Outer Circle (yeah, I'm talking about you, Jojo).

Word of the day: sublime

Greatness with which nothing else can be compared, beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation. From the Latin sublimis 'sloping up to the lintel, uplifted, high, lofty, elevated, exalted.'

Thanks, Wikipedia.

A lot of people have thought about what is sublime.

Xenophilia

We hear about its conservative, angry twin so often.

Lability

...refers to something that is constantly undergoing change or something that is likely to undergo change.