Turkish TV

I've been watching a lot of Turkish TV lately. A lot. There's so much available and freely streamable out on the internet.

I've gotten into a daily routine of watching Burada Laf Çok. followed by the news every evening on CNNTürk's live TV. I also try to catch Kral Çıplak on Kanal D when I can. Speaking of Kanal D, I've been tuning in to that more often. I took a cue from a guest post on Aaron's Everyday Language Learner blog, talking about using soap operas for learning purposes. I'm not a huge soap opera watcher, but decided to hunt around for something interesting. I found it in the serial Kavak Yelleri (Poplar Winds/Daydreaming). It's pretty standard fare for soap operas - mostly better looking people than you living mostly better lives than you in mostly better settings with the same petty problems. In fact, it was the stunning scenery that got me watching the show. Kanal D airs new episodes of the show on Tuesdays, as well as repeating them at other times during the week. I've only seen two episodes so far, but I'm pretty happy with my comprehension level, so I'll keep watching it.

I'm really very surprised at the amount of Turkish programming I can find online. There's so much more variety than I could ever find for Polish. I should point out that even watching commercials has been beneficial to me. With Ramazan currently being celebrated, most of the commercials have a marketing slant towards what to eat at Iftar, although there are also many other furniture and kitchen appliance commercials too, all with specials going on during Ramazan. I have to wonder if Turks get as sick of all the commercialism as we do during the Christmas season. I have that damn Coke-a-Cola song running through my head (in fact, it reminds me of a commercial that runs in Spain during the Christmas season for "El Almendro" - same nostalgic, feel-good, catchy tune.)

As for music, I learned of another artist named Cem Adrian on Kral Çıplak, so I'll probably use one of his songs to learn next, although I haven't decided which one yet. I'm impressed by the variety of his music. He reminds me a lot of Miguel Bosé (from Spain) in the 1990s. Very sublime lyrics and music.

All in all, I've been using Turkish TV much the same as I would any other programming. I leave it on throughout the day, and when something piques my interest, I'll pay attention, otherwise it's background noise, just as American programming is to me.

Getting more use out of all the media available to me.

It's been a little over a month since my last post, so I should recap what's been going on.

In addition to the daily Turkish news reading I've been doing (and learning anywhere from 100-120 or so words a week), I've been concentrating on music and video.

I've taken in and learned about a song a week with pretty good results. I've tried to vary the types of music I'm listening to and learning, but frankly, I have much better luck with standard pop/pop rock music with catchy hooks and fairly concise lyrics. They're not all current hits, but they have been at some point, so they're all pretty well known songs. First up was Teoman's Sus Konuşma. The next week I went on to Serdar Ortaç's Haksızlık. I also learned the lyrics to Candan Erçetin's Hazırım. I followed that with Ferhat Göçer's Bu Şarkı Bizim Olsun (a truly beautiful song that was well worth learning). And this week I'm learning Feridun Düzağaç's Döneceksin Diye Söz Ver.

Speaking of Feridun Düzağaç, I learned of him on a program on CNN Turkish Live called Kral Çıplak. It's a program featuring interviews with different artists and it's pretty entertaining. I've been taking advantage of the live streaming video I've found. A couple other good stations I've been watching are YOL TV and Kanal Avrupa, both based out of Germany.

I'm at a point now where I can really concentrate on all that's available to me and not have to worry about why some grammatical structure is constructed the way it is.