TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-02-11, 14:20

Car wrote:Well, at least you could help the kids after all, even though that must have felt quite bad indeed.

Right, I've been too hard on myself. On the bright side, there are many Kurds here in Antalya, and just in 1 day I was able to speak with someone from Muş, Diyarbakır and Batman, in Kurdish, and I understood them all. (And no need to mention, I speak in Turkish all the time).

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby księżycowy » 2019-02-11, 15:26

What does the Dark Knight have to do with Kurds?

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-02-11, 16:16

What does the bright side have to do with the Dark Knight? :hmm:

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-02-11, 16:33

vijayjohn wrote:What does the bright side have to do with the Dark Knight? :hmm:

Ksiezycowy's question is about Batman, I assume.

Batman is a city in Turkey; as for the etymology, I cannot find a trustable explanation; could it be that -man is a Persian suffix?

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-02-11, 16:51

-e-man means 'of me' in Persian, and -emân means 'our'. Man just means 'I, me'. *shrug*

The English Wikipedia article on the river at least gives a citation for the possibility that it's named after the Batı Raman mountain. It also mentions the possibility that it refers to an Ottoman unit of weight but without a citation.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby księżycowy » 2019-02-11, 17:40

"I am Batman."

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-02-11, 20:22

I found a collection of Turkish school textbooks in the house that I rented, which apparently belong to its previous tenant, a school teacher. I started reading Grade 9 History and read Unit 1 "Tarih ve Tarih Yazıcılığı". This completes the round "Turkish reading" of my language plan.
Image

Next is "Arabic videos", and I want to watch something on Netflix.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby eskandar » 2019-02-12, 1:09

vijayjohn wrote:The English Wikipedia article on the river at least gives a citation for the possibility that it's named after the Batı Raman mountain. It also mentions the possibility that it refers to an Ottoman unit of weight but without a citation.

I sort of doubt the Batı Raman explanation - sounds like folk etymology. OED suggests the unit of weight explanation; the unit in question is also called a "batman." Some claim that "batman" dates back to proto-Turkic, whereas others suggest that the "man" part is from mina (which became "man" in Persian), also known in English as maund.

Nişanyan's dictionary suggests the following etymology for Batman:
ETü: [ Kaşgarî, Divan-i Lugati't-Türk, 1073]
batmān: al-minā [yaklaşık yarım kilogramlık tartı birimi]
<< ETü batman tartı birimi ~ OFa padmān ölçü (Kaynak: D-M sf. 269)

→ peyman

Not: [düzeltildi: 24/02/2018] Aynı İrani sözcük modern Farsçaya paymān "ölçü" şeklinde gelmiştir.


Also, that's really cool that you found old Turkish textbooks in your house!
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-02-12, 21:41

I watched the first episode of the series Al Hayba on Netflix, in Arabic with English subtitles.

Next round is "Kurdish reading". I will read texts and do exercises from the book "Hînker".

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-02-18, 22:45

I did a few exercises from Hînker, and I think I'll do a few more. I want to finish Unit 5.

Meanwhile I watched the film "IO" on Netflix in Turkish. It feels a bit wrong to watch a dub of something that I can watch in the original English... but I can't help it that I can't find original Turkish shows that interest me. I am even thinking of watching "Black Mirror" in Turkish. :para:

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-02-19, 21:17

I added a Burak King song to lyricstraining:
https://lyricstraining.com/tr/play/bura ... HDLkEvrk7D

And I can see on their website that they created a phone app as well. Going to try it out!
EDIT: I tried it and it looks awesome and entertaining! On the app, you do multiple choice instead of typing the lyrics, which gives it more of a game feeling. The only bad thing is that I can't play my own songs in the app. :( I wrote them an email asking if they are going to add this option.

EDIT2: And another bad thing is that it's not free. I can only play 3 songs per 30 mins in the free version.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-02-19, 23:42

And I finished the full cycle of my language plan!

It took me 20 days, and I did 9 different activities. Not bad, considering that I moved to a different city in between.

Next on the list is Arabic reading -- I'll read a story or two from "Kalila wa Dimna" for that.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-02-20, 23:01

The lyricstraining app is really awesome and it's become my favourite language learning app. I did many songs for Turkish and a few for other languages (Italian, German, Polish, English), and I really enjoy it.

They replied to my email and said they are planning to add the feature that lets you play you own songs in the app. Can't wait until it appears!

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby eskandar » 2019-03-08, 3:17

I like the lyricstraining app but I wish they had it for other languages (or would let us add our own songs - if you find out when they add that feature, let me know!) My spoken Turkish is too weak for it to be useful for me yet, and I'm not interested in the other languages they have. Shame because it's a great concept!
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby Car » 2019-03-08, 9:39

Wait, you can add your own songs to Lyricstraining?
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-03-08, 18:39

Car wrote:Wait, you can add your own songs to Lyricstraining?

From the website -- yes, absolutely, and the subtitling process is very easy and fast.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby Car » 2019-03-08, 20:58

voron wrote:
Car wrote:Wait, you can add your own songs to Lyricstraining?

From the website -- yes, absolutely, and the subtitling process is very easy and fast.

Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for mentioning it!
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-03-10, 8:48

It's been a while since I last studied anything. Moving to a new place, settling down and getting used to it definitely takes time.

Yesterday I read the first story from this Kurdish book
https://m.kitapyurdu.com/index.php?rout ... _id=427657

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-03-12, 15:47

Kurdish
I read one more story from "Carek ji Caran" (Once Upon a Time). It's a children's book with folk tales, and it's my first "real" Kurdish book. It's rather easy to read, and I hope it will be a jump start for me into other kinds of Kurdish literature.

It's interesting how some plots are similar to those of Russian/European folk tales. For example, the story about an enchanted prince/princess who take off their animal skin at nighttime and become a human, and their lover who burns their skin. In the Russian tale, it's a princess who lives in the shape of a frog (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frog_Princess). In the Kurdish tale I read yesterday, it's a prince who lives in the shape of a calf. I wonder if it is modern interference, or if the plots date back to the Indo-European times.

There is one recurring detail in Kurdish tales that I haven't seen in Russian tales. Some plots feature a young girl who is captured by a beast -- and this part is common, but then, Kurdish tales tell explicitly that the girl bears children from the beast, and in some stories, against her will ( :shock: ).

EDIT: Now that I think again about it, I guess I remember similar plots in Russian tales as well. It's been a while since I last read folk tales in Russian.

Turkish
Binge-watched all episodes of "Beni tahmin et" from here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXLkDVLids

It's fun, but at this point I'm not sure I'm learning anything just from watching.

As a matter of fact, I'm not sure what to do with my Turkish and Arabic at this point. With Turkish, I know that I should read more academic and specialized stuff to improve my vocabulary, but is there even a point, besides perfectionism, if I won't use it in my daily life? With Arabic, I'm sick of being at a false beginner level and doing beginner level materials, but on the other hand, I find intermediate level stuff too challenging and, as a result, boring, and I don't know how to overcome this stage.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2019-03-12, 16:17

A general question related to language learning: why does it happen that you reach a plato (at any level) in some languages, but not in others? Is it about the difficulty of a language, motivation, accessibility of materials, or all together?

For example, I don't remember having stuck with Turkish at either beginner or intermediate level -- maybe just because I moved to Turkey when I was intermediate, and it automatically opened room for improvement? And I don't remember any difficulties going from beginner to intermediate either, for any of my languages but Arabic -- I just did what I liked, it was fun and it always worked. Serbian was especially smooth and easy. I sky-rocketed to C1 in a year -- naturally, because it's similar to my native Russian, but then, I tried doing a similar thing with Polish and it didn't work.

I guess it's all about chemistry (yes!) after all.


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