This post transported me back to the early days after moving to this town. When it was all new and foreign and different. We wanted out. We were not going to have children here, not going to buy a house here, definitely not going to send the kids to school here. Twelve years later here we are. Still here. The town has changed in some ways; it’s a little prettier, has sprawled and is more crowded. There are signs of community at Click for more
Tag: Being Turkish
Alphabet Soup
Before Ataturk the written language in Turkey was Ottoman. It was an ornate language, using the Arabic script, which didn’t fit the phonetics of the language, and borrowed heavily from Arabic and Persian. It did not coincide with the language spoken across Anatolia, which was reasonably similar to Turkish. The effect was to divide the people into the majority who were illiterate and a minority elite who knew how to read and write. Turkish was something looked down upon; it Click for more