Unit 1 Review

Geçmiş Olsun!

Unit 1 has only been the beginning of this musical introduction to Turkish language, but already we've traversed the full range of temporal planes and become familiar with dozens of necessary and unnecessary activities. We've confronted the poor underbelly of one of Istanbul's wealthiest districts, the painful alienation of migrant laborers, and even mortality itself. Seasons and years have come and gone, and though we have known pain, we have also learned the futility of forgetting. In the meantime, we've learned how to express feelings, let others know that we too are human and nobody is perfect, and describe the joy of love, the malaise of loneliness, and all sorts of bitterness. This has been through an exploration of a number of genres, from classical sounds of sanat music and Turkish tango to rugged arabesk, soulful uzun hava, and some rock, pop, and folk mixed in for good measure. This is a mere preview of what is in store for coming units.

Perhaps many of the lines were difficult to decipher and many things went over your head, but in these twelve lessons, we've introduced hundreds of basic vocabulary items and several grammatical elements that should be very familiar by now. To review this material and solidify some of the vocabulary going forward, try using the various games and exercises on this Unit 1 War-Up Quizlet list. You'll need this vocabulary going forward, as our songs become more linguistically complex and challenging. You can quiz yourself and try out the other games on Quizlet to see what you've learned.



Unit 1 has centered on basic verb tenses and vocabulary items. In Unit 2, we will continue this exploration of verbs, focusing on more complicated verbal tenses that may be alien to a native English-speakers linguistic logic. Once we unlock these verbs, however, you with have the essential keys to basic comprehension of the vast majority of sentences in Turkish music, allowing us to focus on more specific linguistic points and particularly thorny sentences that will provide valuable experience in parsing the language's most challenging formulations.

There's a saying in Turkish that is used after the completion of a difficult task  or experience, "geçmiş olsun!" meaning "may it be past". We've already learned in this unit all about the geçmiş, and in the coming unit, we'll cover the grammar of olsun and much much more. Geçmiş olsun!

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