About

Tuned-in Turkish is designed and updated by Chris Gratien. It is one of the many MENAlab sites comprised of Ottoman History Podcast and its friends and family.

About the music: All of the songs featured in this blog are hosted by various users on third-party sites such as YouTube.

A message from the editor:

I am looking for current Turkish language students looking to make small contributions to the site. Please email me (chrisgratien [at] gmail.com) if you might be interested. Special thanks to Seçil Yılmaz and Carlos Grenier for helping with the early development of the site.

I believe that Tuned-in Turkish is a valuable language learning tool, and while I've put lots of time into developing the site, I've also made it a low-cost, sustainable affair, so that Tuned-In Turkish, like many great web ventures, remains completely open access and free of advertising. There are two reasons why I have done so. The first is that I think ad-free content is generally a good thing, and I want the materials on this site to be access to the largest audience possible. The second is that having both studied and taught languages in the past, I know how hard language teachers work and how much time they spend outside of class developing materials to make the classroom experience more exciting and helpful. Tuned-in Turkish is thus aimed at helping not only language students but also language instructors, without whom this site would not be possible.

In this regard, I would like to acknowledge the language teachers who have helped me in my own language learning. Most of all, I would like to acknowledge my first Turkish teacher at Georgetown University, Dr. Sylvia Önder, who throughout the year of my introductory Turkish course, indulged my curiosity about songs and other materials that I carried with me around campus and brought to office hours in the hopes of finding an answer to another of my endless questions. Some of the songs featured on this site are ones that I asked her about many years ago, and without her knowledge and support, I likely would have never been in a position to design such a web page.

In addition, I would like to acknowledge other former Turkish teachers and teaching assistants from my years at Georgetown and elsewhere, especially Hakkan Yılmaz from Dilmer in Istanbul, Abdullah Uğur, Sevim Yılmaz Önder, and Esra Derya Dilek from summer Ottoman at Yıldız Teknik in Istanbul, Zeynep Gür and Elçin Arabacı from Georgetown University, and Mine Nakipoğlu, Bekir Şerifoğlu, Asuman Algın Acır, and Didem İkizoğlu from Boğaziçi University.