On Saturday May 21st, I met with Caglar Usdun for some language exchange. I went to his apartment. He began by teaching me basic phrases such as “marhaba”. This means “hello” in English. He then also told me how they make nouns plural in Turkish. In English our plural nouns end in the letter s usually. With Turkish, plural nouns end with “er.” He also introduced me to the Turkish alphabet. It uses the same alphabet as English and German but there are some variations. When there are soft consontant sounds such as “sh” or “ch” the letter representing them are like “s” and “c” with marks underneath them. This was all new to me. Caglar said he understood this was difficult. He told me it felt that teaching me Turkish is probably much more difficult for him than it is for me to teach him English. I agreed with this.
We took a break from the language exchange and I asked him what was going on in his life currently. He told me got sick the night before and couldn’t go out with his friends. He told me he was going to become very busy in the following few weeks because of his preparation for grad school in University of Miami. I congratulated him for getting accepted and he thanked me. He told me was going to be busy getting living arrangements in order in Miami, booking a flight back to Turkey to visit his family, and completing registration and paperwork for his graduate program.
I then met his roommate Bikir Birkcan. Bikir told me needed tutoring for speaking. I told him I would be glad to help him. So we exchanged numbers. He told me he would be free sometime in the next weekend. I then left their apartment and went back home.
Good to hear there is some good language exchange happening as well!
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