Hello,

I am a native speaker of Turkish. I have got some questions to the people who learn Turkish as a second language. I know the answers will change from person to person but I just wonder.

1-How does the Turkish language sound to you? Is it fast? Is it refined? Like what? Once a person who does not speak any Turkish told me that it sounds like Turkish people speak so fast.

for me Turkish is the language of poetry; it always sounds like a music...

2-Do you fully understand a native Turk when listening to them? Do you watch Turkish television? Do you undertand it?

yes I watch Turkish movies online or on TV and I understand 80%; when I am talking to my Turkish friends I can understand up to 90% . yes, I admit is a bit hard to understand politics or religion terms...

3-What aspects of the Turkish grammer is easy and what aspects are difficult for you?

gerund

the order of extensions of the verb

and sometime the izafet chain..

4-Do you think that Turkish words are easy to memorize? What techniques you use to memorize words?

yes, it is easy to memorize if you study every day at least 30 minutes; I write the unknown words and repeat them weekly

5-Why do you learn Turkish?

it is a very hard question; the first time I started to learn Turkish together with my daughter (she studied in school; for the beginning Turkish appeared a little hard for her comparative to French and English); after that it became a passion for me...

Thanks a lot for your answers.

1-How does the Turkish language sound to you? Is it fast? Is it refined? Like what? Once a person who does not speak any Turkish told me that it sounds like Turkish people speak so fast. Soft soft. Except ç that surprises me often. Very fast. There can be a lot of information in one quickly passing word. And also cool because sentences are often very simplified and ambiguous. I often use this style when I write in Finnish and people err to think it is something original.

2-Do you fully understand a native Turk when listening to them? Do you watch Turkish television? Do you undertand it? No I seldom understand everything. The word stress is a slight problem for me, sometimes I cannot understand quite easy sentences because I "hear" them wrong. This is frustrating at times.

3-What aspects of the Turkish grammer is easy and what aspects are difficult for you? Turkish morphology is very regular and logical, like simple mathematics. The difficult things for me are 1) everything including LAR and 2) use of tenses.

4-Do you think that Turkish words are easy to memorize? What techniques you use to memorize words? They must be easy because my vocabulary is not so bad. I play with roots, an original Turkish word can always be separated into understandable sequences. I have a constant problem with Arabic loanwords even though I know Arabic a bit. I never learn words as such but I read a lot. When you come across with the same word for the tenth time you have learned it.

5-Why do you learn Turkish? The reasons vary with time... But Turkish language is a window to a fascinating country, culture and people. And Turkish syntax is a challenge to my brain.