Instructor: Osman Cubuk
Class Title: Beginning Turkish
Email:osman@ntu.edu.tw
Turkish is the 6th biggest language spoken in the world. Turkic languages (土耳其語族) are spoken by more than 200 million people in a wide area through Asia and Europe. One of the most popular of the Turkic languages is Oghuz Turkish, and it is spoken widely in Turkey, Near East, Middle-East (Cyprus, same part of Iraq, Iran and Syria) the former Soviet Union, western China, and the Balkans (Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Moldova and Ukraina). These languages of Turkic origin include Central Asian Tigers such as Uzbek (烏茲別克), Tatar (韃靼), Kazakh (哈薩克斯坦), Azeri (亞塞拜然) and Turkmen (土克曼斯坦). Even the Leaders of some of these countries speak Turkish as second language. It has several dialects in those regions, but there are small differences among those dialects. All regions of vital strategic importance in the world today so as Taiwan. In several European countries such as Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, England and France, there are a great number of Turkish people (15 millions) who can also speak Turkish language. Learning Turkish will also give the codes of understanding Turkish-Ottoman Culture so that these codes will lead you to understand the regions of Europe- Central Asia- Middle East -West Africa.
Course Description:
This course is intended as an introduction to Turkish Language by addressing the four basic skills of the language: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Beginning of Turkish course designed to introduce learners of Turkish as a second/foreign language to the basic structures of Turkish and to its uses in common situations of everyday communication. The students will continue to systematically listen to recorded texts, reading written productions of these texts, learning specific basic vocabulary and building up an additional vocabulary repertoire of about 500-600 words. Don’t panic, it looks daunting, but there are only 29 letters. Basic grammatical rules related to nouns, verbs and particles will be learned, not as an end in themselves, but as a necessary tool to understanding how the language works. At the same time participants will learn a lot about the large variety of culture and language in Turkey.