Passionately Promoting A More Perfect World

Help On Remembering Turkish Vocabulary

diss-this-coarse-discourse:

sinesalvatorem:

Does anyone have any advice on vocabulary retention?

My problem with learning languages has always been that, while I’m great at remembering how the grammar works, I can’t retain the vocabulary at all. The only foreign languages I’ve ever been even slightly able to understand have been French and German, because a large fraction of their vocabulary is cognate with English words. However, for any non-shared vocabulary, I can’t recognise it or remember it.

I decided to see how far I could get through the Turkish Duolingo course and, as expected, the vocabulary is killing me. I keep forgetting words I learned less than an hour before, and then going over them and losing them again. This is probably at least somewhat because I’m attacking it all at once, but I do want to take advantage of my current hyperfocus as much as possible.

AFAIK, my memory mostly works by forming interesting-seeming connections between things, which allows me to remember both ends of the chain. For example, I can remember that “pasta” is Turkish for cake, because “pasta” is a food word in English. I can remember “adam” is man because it’s the same in Hebrew. I can remember that “su” is water and “süt” is milk, because they’re both liquids that sound similar.

Otherwise, I’m not sure what would help. I’m using flashcards, but they’re definitely up against their limits. Any advice?

if youre learning Turkish to better understand those Turkisk singers you like, conaider just reading translations of the turkish lyrics of those songs alongside the actual Turkish? Singing songs is a great way to learn words with easy to remember context

I’m learning Turkish as part of a completely insane plan to immerse myself in Turkish media, blog entertainingly about it, catch the attention of Turkish Tumblr users, gain Turkish followers, and then FINALLY (possibly years down the line) have friends in Istanbul so that I can visit.

Yes, this is a stupid plan, but I currently have hyperfocus on this project as a coping mechanism for unrelated shit in my life, so I might as well take the opportunity to learn as much Turkish as I can.