Seurat the Dot, or Dorky Language Post Number One (of Many)

What's with that dot on the first letter of İstanbul in your last post, Leslie?

Well, I'm glad you asked! (Someone really did ask me this over the weekend, and I really was glad.) Turkish has two versions of the letter i, and they represent different sounds. The one with the dot, written i in lower case and İ in upper case, is pronounced like the vowel in English beet, or perhaps bit.

(I am not clear on this point because my Turkish textbook says the former – pronounce it like beet – but my Turkish professor pronounces it more like bit. Maybe I'll report on this once I've heard more native Turkish speech.)

The one without the dot, written as ı in lower case and I in upper case, represents a high back tense unrounded sound. If that means nothing to you, it sounds a little like the u in English cup, but with the back of the tongue a little closer to the roof of the mouth. Or the Russian vowel ы, but with the tongue a bit farther back toward the throat.

Anyway. İf İstanbul were written without the dot in Turkish, it would sound kind of like Uhstanbul. Since there's no such problem in English, İ guess there's no reason to keep writing it as İstanbul in this English-language blog, except that İ like capital dotted i.

-Yelİz

YES

Excerpt from an email I got this morning about the program I'm going to be on:

As part of your program, many trips are organized to places like Istanbul, Cappadocia, Safranbolu etc. There is also a trekking activity in your program, near Kızılcahamam region, a liveboard discovery diving experiment and canoe rafting in Alanya. Also excursions are included in your program to historical places in Ankara...

I was quite upset at first, back in April, when I found out that they put me in Ankara instead of İstanbul. (The CLS program has two intermediate-level groups, one in İstanbul and one in Ankara). İstanbul is the tourist destination, the city people fall in love with, the place with all the history and all the sights. Ankara is... well, the capital, formerly a dusty little town known chiefly for its goats ("Ankara" = "angora," get it?) until it found Atatürk's favor in the 1920's. İstanbul is on the Bosphorus; Ankara is, I am given to understand, somewhere in the Anatolian desert. You can imagine why I would be upset.

But I came to terms with my lot (after making sure I couldn't switch into the İstanbul group... no dice), since the Ankara group was promised excursions and homestays instead of dorm-stays. In trying to keep me on Turkey-track instead of having me run off to Kyrgyzstan (always a risk, with me), my Turkish professor also tempted me with the prospect of lots of Central Asians in Ankara to chat in Russian/Turkish/Uzbek with. Nice. So by now I was already prepared to love my time in Turkey's drab capital, and now that they've sweetened the deal with trekking, canoe rafting, and the geologically bizarre region of Cappadocia (I swear, Cappadocia is ALL my Lonely Planet Turkey guidebook talks about), I'm super excited!

PS, since people have been asking, I leave for Turkey on June 19. Still nearly four weeks away! :(
PPS, if anyone knows what a "liveboard discovery diving experiment" might be, I'd like to know. It makes me a little nervous.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my new blog: the Turk-o-Log! (brass fanfare)

I’ll be going to Turkey for eight weeks this summer on a U.S. government-sponsored language learning program. Actually, maybe now is a good time to put up the disclaimer they asked us to include: the views represented on this weblog are solely my own and do not in any way represent the views of the U.S. Department of State. Or Georgetown University, or any other institution with which I may be affiliated. There.

This blog won’t be quite like my dearly-loved (by me, anyway) Russia blog; the difference lies mostly in the fact that I actually knew some things about Russia, while I know next to nothing about Turkey. The goal of this blog, then, besides reassuring my parents that I'm still alive and well in Ankara (hi Mom!), is to share my first explorations of contemporary Turkish language, culture and society. And share pictures. Since I'll only be in Turkey for a short time, I'll be writing a little bit before I leave; in my abundant free time (classes have finished for the semester), I'm making an effort to learn some things about Turkey to avoid being completely shell-shocked when I get there. Look for new posts soon!

-Yeliz (it's my "Turkish name" from class this year)