Why Learning Turkish: Reasons and Facts

That’s what came up to my mind when I found out that my faculty organized a Turkish language course as an optional subject. Besides the fact that Turkey is situated faraway from my country, I suppose there are not many Turkish people living in Indonesia like Australian, Dutch, American, Japanese or Korean. Above all, what will be the economical benefit of learning this language?

I narrow-mindedly thought that Indonesia didn’t have a significant bilateral cooperation with Turkey, unlike what we gain with Korea, Thailand, Arabian countries, or India, for instance; no wonder a huge number of Indonesian people eager to learn the language of those countries. But, Turkish?

However this perception totally changed when I stepped into the land of where the Ottoman Kingdom had ever reigned. Everywhere across the city and the countryside, almost everyone I met up with only speak Turkish. It was very unlikely to find those speak good English, French, or German from the total population of 70 million people. Even the immigrants coming from Bulgaria, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Iran, Russia and Mongolia, also speak Turkish very fluently in their daily life, as if they had been originated from Turkey and born there. And when I asked them to speak in English …, do not expect they will understand you clearly. At least only Russians who answered using average vocabularies and good British accent.

I began to reflect this, “…Turkish language is indeed important. At least, if I want to survive in the eastern European countries, English will be of no use, because there’s another more common language spoken here.” And it is however true, based on the reference I got from the internet, Turkish language is not only spoken by the local Turkish people, but also has become the second national language of Cyprus, Republic of Macedonia, and Kosovo. Turkish language is also widely practiced in Albania, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and Azerbaijan.

Turkish language is actually a mixture of Arabic and Persian vocabulary and grammar which had been applied since the Ottoman era by using the Persian alphabets. In the year of 1928, when the governmental system had changed into the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk altered the alphabets into Latin to legalize it as the national language. Therefore, the Turkish language being spoken and written by the recent generation has been through many changes from the Turkish used in the past time. Besides, there are also elements of other European languages which enrich the vocabularies, particularly those from French and German language.

So, are you curious enough to know how this language is like? Let’s practice! (the pronunciation and spelling are both almost the same as its writing).

* Merhaba = Hello

* Evet = Yes, Hayır = No

* Teşekkür ederim; Rica ederim = Thank you; You're welcome

* İyi günler = Good morning

* Nasılsınız? İyiyim. = How are you? I'm fine

* Hoşçakal! = See you!