Conversation is the single most important thing while learning a language. If I had to choose between vocab learning with flash cards, grammar books/websites and conversations in my target language, I would not hesitate to throw out the former out the window. I am saying this because all around me, I see people that want to learn a language, and are forever stuck in the vocab or grammar phase. Don't get me wrong, vocab and grammar are all incredibly useful; all I am saying is that if I were to make a choice, I want to talk. I really don't care if I can list all 6 cases of the Turkish language as long as I can talk. So, let's talk. Let's talk about conversation.
Bar San Cal(l)isto. Photo: Livia Hengel #sanca #trastevere
First off, the problem I ran into when I started learning Turkish a month ago, is that I am trying to learn Turkish in Italy. My environment and my target language are so inconveniently severed. So good news, if you are living in the country that speaks your target language, you're in luck! Even luckier if the locals don't speak other languages you speak. I lived in the Netherlands for 6 years. The problem, in the beginning, was that everyone spoke excellent English and would usually switch to English upon hearing my foreign accent. Don't make this your excuse for not learning. Ultimately, giving them a confident ol' "Ik wil nederlands spreken" (I want to speak Dutch!) would usually work wonders: they become more interested in you and soon you'll be the foreigner who speaks a bit of Dutch, that's like a golden ticket to anywhere (use this power wisely). Not living in your target language country, or having locals that speak your language, makes learning your target language a little harder, but definitely not impossible. One of the goals of this blog however, is to show how much Turkish I can learn, while living in Rome. I side challenge for myself, is that I am doing this without paying anyone for courses, or conversations.
I needed to find some Turks. By pure chance, I ran into Yaz in Rome, at piazza San Calisto in Trastevere. This is also, a great spot for chilling with friends, having a few Aperol Spritzes, and meeting new people. I desperately needed people to practice Turkish with and he said he was Turkish and that he would agree to shoot a progress video with me (hero). Here before you, is the unedited 8 minutes 28 seconds of our conversation that night. Make sure to activate subtitles in English.
I left it unedited. I did this because I want to stress that language learning is 1) a process and it's okay to embarrass oneself and 2) it's fun. I made a lot of mistakes, but it's okay! How are we expected to learn anything if we can't make mistakes, right? While we try to keep the conversation strictly Turkish, at some points that became very difficult. That's okay. We share words with each other to communicate, and most of the times, the words matter less than the message. Did you understand each other? "Yes, but I used the wrong tense of this word." Move on. Laugh about it, learn from your mistake, internalize it, and move on. We're not robots (even they can't speak perfectly, by the way).
The miraculous invention of the Language Café
Chances is are, you're not going to be as lucky as I was in finding a Yaz, randomly, in a city of 4.3 million people. The answer is simple: go to a language café. A language café is usually a bar in which people meet to exchange languages and/or meet new fun people. It's socially a very easy environment; easy in the sense that it is welcoming. In the different ones I've been to, whether it was in Utrecht, Rome, or Tokyo, all had very similar, friendly patrons, most of which, are in the same position as you: awkwardly trying to communicate in a language they are not fluent in. But how do I find a language café, you may ask? Señor Google, as a friend from Barcelona used to say. In Rome, I found Roma language and Social Exchange which happens weekly on Mondays from 20:00 till late. It's at the beginning of Via Marmorata, just between Trastevere and Testaccio, at Rec23, a pretty cool bar. There's more of these, but this looks like it's the biggest one in the center of Rome. And since we're here, for my Utrecht crew, there's a language café on the Breedstraat, every Wednesday from 20:00 till... not so late? But it goes to show that even Utrecht, a city of 330 thousand people, has a buzzing language café. Oh yeah, did I mention that they are all free? Until you buy a beer, of course.
Another super useful tool is the Couchsurfing app. Not only can you stay over at people's houses for free, but you can also organize meetings and events with other travelers or locals, and filter them according to the languages they speak! This is the jackpot.
My first night at the Roma language and Social Exchange, I spent the better part of 2 hours looking for Turkish people. The café was packed. I spent a lot of time walking from person to person, asking if they knew of any Turks there, that night. No luck. Everyone kept of saying that I had just missed a couple, or that three Turkish girls left 30 minutes ago. I was disappointed, of course, but it was okay. The people there were really nice and I was making some nice connections. But then, out of nowhere, somebody I met taps on my shoulder, just as I was leaving the café and says: "there's a Turkish woman, come see!" In disbelief, I turn around, and I saw her standing there. As she's paying for the bill I approach her. She's everything I ever wanted and needed that night. "You're Turkish right? Where are you from?" "Ankara" she replies. "Oh Ankara..." I thought to myself, while gently swooned by the first Turkish words I heard since I started learning.
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