Posted on by dilark

How I Learned My Parent’s Language (and how you can learn another language, too)

At the age of 17, my parents had me participate in a Turkish band because they wanted to help me get to know my culture. But as a Turkish American who grew up very divorced from her culture overall, it was a weird experience. When we tried to sing a Turkish song by the name of Cambaz (which means acrobat in English), it became incredibly apparent that I was not raised speaking the language like my other Turkish peers. When I tried to sing the chorus of the song, I was mocked for mispronouncing a word by one of my band members, with the band director lightly joking that I should sing in English. It made me feel like there was no hope for me to ever learn my heritage language or connect with my culture simply because I grew up so divorced from it. My parents chose to not teach me Turkish because after I received my autism diagnosis, they wanted to make sure I assimilated into American culture as much as possible to make up for the differences that my autism would cause. However, having a name like Dilara would give my teachers and classmates a run for their money as they would try to pronounce or spell it and my physical appearance would pique questions from others about where I was from. It’s safe to say that despite my parent’s efforts to help me assimilate, I proceeded to grow up not knowing the culture of my heritage while also feeling like a stranger in the country I was born and raised in. After my failed attempt to learn Turkish with Rosetta Stone at the age of 7, I thought that acquiring the language as an adult would be impossible, but I decided to go for it anyway. And the results I achieved genuinely surprised me. In this article I’m going to go over methods I used to learn my parent’s language and what I would recommend to you if you are trying to learn a second language yourself. 

I started with Duolingo last September because that seemed like the most common sense thing to do since it advertised everywhere. A couple of weeks of practice helped me review the occasional phrases I’ve picked up from the house along with teaching me some basic grammar points. I had heard phrases like “merhaba” (hello) and “iyi geceler” (good night) for a good majority of my life but this was the first time I was learning how to spell them. This seemed to suffice for the first couple of weeks to a month because I was getting a foundation in the language and reviewing what I had learned before. But it eventually showed to not be enough. This is when I started to consult my aunt over the phone to learn more basic phrases that Duolingo wouldn’t teach and even started doing a little reading practice with her. As I was, and am currently living with my parents who are native speakers of the language, I could ask them questions related to grammar or certain words. I would try speaking here and there, but it was clear that I didn’t have enough vocabulary to hold a decent conversation yet. But as I continued to learn the language, a strength of mine that came from having heard the language in bits and pieces started to emerge: pronunciation. Even if I didn’t get enough exposure to the language as a kid to understand it or speak it, I was very familiar with the sounds, and using what I committed to memory came with ease for the most part. This showed up especially when I would read with my aunt over the phone. 

From this point on, I became very interested in second language acquisition. This was when I first heard about a theory called comprehensible input. This theory was founded by Steven Krashen in the 1980s and states that the main way people acquire language is by consuming input that they can comprehend. Any shows you watch and readings you do at your current level can help you grow your language skills. While it’s been a long time since this theory was published and a lot of misinformation about it on the internet, there was a certain part of it that rang true for me as I was going about studying Turkish. If you’re looking to self-study a language and don’t know where to start, I would strongly recommend that this is one of the first steps you take.

Starting off fresh in a language, you won’t be able to consume media for native speakers. Even children’s content can be a little bit hard at first because of the nonsensical plots the shows often contain. But if you go onto YouTube and search [target language] comprehensible input, you will be able to find a variety of videos targeted at beginners in the language of your choice. These videos will usually contain audio visual content where the speaker uses very simple language to explain what simple things are like holding up a toy car and saying “this is a car” in the target language. This is very helpful because it allows you to start making associations to things in the language rather than just translating words to their native language equivalent. It won’t get rid of the process you will undergo of translating things in your head fully, but it will be a very good start at fossilizing the language in your brain in the long run. Keep in mind that as you are working with immersion materials, you can use outside sources to make things more comprehensible if the language material is a little bit beyond your level such as using target language subtitles or an extension called Language Reactor that allows you to see Target Language subtitles and subtitles in your native language to make understanding easier. Along with that, the extension allows you to hover over words to learn their meanings. You can watch videos with native language subtitles as well but I don’t recommend that as much as I recommend the other two things I suggested because target language subtitles allow you to learn how words are spelled and look words up so you can write them down and make flashcards. 

While immersion material in a target language is very important, some deliberate studying is necessary to get the finer points of grammar in the beginning. The more learning materials you go through, be it books or videos, you will start to learn the language more and more, but there are some things that will be a struggle. Such as memorizing vocabulary or grammar. This is where skill building comes in. When you watch a video with target language subtitles and there’s a word you want to remember, it is incredibly important to write it down and review it on a consistent basis to put it in your long term memory. This is the whole idea of a Spaced Repetition System and there are many ways to use one. You could use a notebook or any flashcard system, but one I personally recommend is Anki. It’s a little hard to use at first but it’s really good for reviewing words. The simplest way to make a flashcard is to write down the word on one side and the meaning using a picture or your native language on the other. Either way works. And it’s nice to be reviewing a couple words a day. Mainly adding 10 or less at a time to not overwhelm your brain. In regards to grammar, to learn the finer points of that, you can look up videos, internet articles, and purchase grammar books online to study from.  I personally recommend a mix of all three depending on your learning style but buying a book at some point can be incredibly helpful since there are things you won’t learn from the internet alone. I also recommend talking to native speakers of the language to gain an understanding of the finer points of grammar if you have any questions. Living at home, I can easily ask my parents but if you don’t have access to native speakers in your vicinity, you can find them through apps such as HelloTalk and Italki in which you can contact teachers who speak the language or language exchange partners. 

After about two months of using Duolingo, I decided to quit because I found the repetitive exercises weren’t really adding to my Turkish and I found it to be a bit of an annoyance. From here, I spent my time engaging with immersion materials and skill building. Along with watching videos of comprehensible input, I dove into learning songs as well. This worked for me because I’m a musician and I find songs work incredibly well for me to learn anything, and I found myself acquiring a lot of new vocabulary this way. The only thing that I would caution to anyone trying to learn using this method is that the language used in songs doesn’t always grammatically resemble how the language is spoken as song lyrics use plays on words, sentence structure, and dramatic imagery. But reading and taking apart song lyrics is incredibly useful otherwise. In tandem with this, I would try to contact my aunt to read almost anything I could. We worked with online materials and graded readers in the beginning. I think reading is very important in second language acquisition because when we read, we have to use our imagination to think up the situation that is being described in the text. This can help create associations with new vocabulary words and grammar. All of this will make it easier for you to not translate in your head as much. 

After about three or four months, I was able to start having simple conversations with my parents around the house. It was incredibly hard at first because while I had learned a lot of vocabulary, I hadn’t grasped how to think in the language on the fly yet. But trying to converse in tandem with immersion materials and skill building made it easier for me to think in the language on the fly. I still have to translate in my head sometimes when thinking up longer sentences but when it comes to thinking simple sentences or thoughts, it’s mostly second nature to me. When you start conversing, translating in your head will be an inevitable part of the process, but the more you engage with immersion materials (especially reading), it will become easier. At least, that’s how it’s been for me so far. You want to get the language in your brain as much as possible to the point where you can start thinking in that language. One way of doing that is to watch the same video, episode of a show, or movie, or read a certain text a ton of times. This way, the language presented to you naturally sinks in your brain and you can use it as a spaced repetition system in a way, looking up vocabulary words and grammar structures you hadn’t noticed before on each viewing or reading. 

I wanted to touch on one more point specifically for heritage speakers looking to learn their parent’s language. It is very normal in the beginning to feel a sense of shame related to your abilities in the language. You might be able to understand it but not be able to speak it very well or you might know a couple throwaway phrases like I did. It’s going to hurt in the beginning because connecting to your cultural background is an incredibly difficult process but it can also be very healing. You might feel a sense of guilt for not taking the leap of connecting with your parents culture and choosing to assimilate instead. But it’s never too late to start. And learning your parents language is an important part of that because language is so intertwined with culture. It’s going to feel difficult at first, but it gets better. In the end, you’re not just your parents’ culture or where you grew up, you are you. And you have your own unique experiences and perspective to offer in this world so you shouldn’t feel any pressure to fit into a box. I struggle with not feeling Turkish enough or not feeling American enough, but the best thing I’ve done is to keep going regardless of my insecurities. 

My journey with learning my parents language has been an incredibly complicated one and I’m constantly learning new things day by day. My experiences have taught me not just how to learn a language but how to learn in general. Things like spaced repetition systems and persistence are things that can be applied to learning any topic. The best thing you can do to learn a language is to soak up as much information regarding the language as possible. A mix of immersion and skill building through vocabulary and grammar drills will both take you a very long way. But the most important lesson of all is to never give up. Even when you still find yourself having to translate in your head. Or even when you feel like you just won’t be able to use a certain grammatical structure, it will all pay off in the end. I’m very new to the field of second language acquisition and language learning but it fascinates me as a whole. Once my Turkish gets better, I’m open to learning another language. Potentially Japanese? I do watch a lot of anime. And going to Japan is definitely on my bucket list.

If you are interested in linguistics or language learning yourself and want to go down the massive rabbit hole I went down, here are some resources about second language acquisition and discovering other cultures. 

Some interesting tidbits:

NPR Life Kit, How To Learn A Heritage Language

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/25/1101187823/how-to-learn-a-heritage-language

What I’ve Learned, How To Learn A Language: Input (Why most methods don’t work) 

Duration (minutes): 13:57 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_EQDtpYSNM

Days And Words, Why Language Learners Hate Anki

Duration (minutes): 9:59

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzNizwynP3o

Norwegian With Ilys, How I Learnt Norwegian On My Own

Duration (minutes): 23:04

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWQYqcFX8JE

Posted on by dilark

The Magic Behind Creating a Persona Concert

When I first picked up Persona 5 during quarantine, I fell in love with it and developed a hyperfixation on the series. But little did I know that it would inspire me to plan a tribute concert to the Persona series and this feat would be the most stressful, yet exhilarating of my life. To give a frame of reference to people that may not know what the Persona series is all about, it’s a Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) series created by Atlus. Each of the games revolves around high schoolers that explore dungeons and fight enemies with a manifestation of their inner being, referred to as a persona. The series is ripe with psychological themes surrounding confronting the darkest parts of oneself, friendship, and most importantly awesome music. I had started to learn many of the songs from the soundtrack during quarantine and dreamed of putting on a concert once lockdown restrictions were lifted. And as Vice President of UW Bothell’s very own music production club, I gradually started to get accustomed to a position of power that would allow me to make this show happen. The idea was initially rejected by Oliver, the president of the club, for being a niche topic, but with enough persistence, I was able to get the idea greenlit at the very start of Fall 2022. As I was going to be spearheading the project, I would mainly receive his assistance through working with club council and facilitating meetings. I started off a bit slow being overwhelmed by my vision. I had all of these clubs I wanted to reach out to, tons of effects, a live band, and costume changes. But the overwhelm of all of those things distracted me from the bare minimum of what I needed to do to make the show happen. So I talked to my voice teacher and with her advice,  I formulated a new action plan, one that would be so much easier to follow through with. I’d be collaborating with the Digital Arts Club instead of handling multiple collaborations, singing to backing tracks (barring one instrumental song we would be doing), and I would not be having multiple costume changes. 

Resources I Needed to Put The Project On

Music Production/Scoring

The main resources I used for the music production process were Reaper, Musescore, GarageBand, and Google Docs. In a separate google document, I made a list of every song in the set list and tried to look for its corresponding karaoke track. I was able to find karaoke tracks for the songs I would be singing except one which I would need to make from scratch. I organized all of the tracks by set list order and listed what types of modifications they would need or if none were needed at all. This would make it easy for me to keep track of which ones I needed to work on. I was able to download the videos for the karaoke tracks I had found as mp3 files and drag them into Reaper to record background vocals. Before going into recording anything, I listened to the parts of the songs that had harmonies over and over again with headphones to really be able to hear all of the details. I then got a sheet of the lyrics and wrote the notes for the melodies over the lyrics, using different colors to differentiate different parts from each other. I would then do my best to sing each of the parts I had extracted from listening to each track, adjusting certain parts using trial and error until I honed in on the exact sound I wanted. 

 As for music transcriptions, I was going to originally have my guitar teacher in charge of those because music transcription is not my strength at all and I don’t enjoy it. But he was not able to do so for the two songs in the set that were going to have instrumental accompaniment on them. So I was left to my own devices. I downloaded Musescore, which I had not touched in ages, found some arrangements for the songs that I kind of like, and did minor reworking to the arrangements to make them stripped down to the instruments we would need (piano and violin). This reworking process took about a couple months. As I did not have Reaper installed on my Mac, I ended up exporting the audio of each part into GarageBand tracks so the performers I featured and I would have something to practice with. 

Club Collaborations

The first and arguably most important task that would kick off the project would be to hold a meeting with the Digital Arts Club in which I planned to pitch the idea of the show, give an official set list along with rough visuals for each song for the artists to reference, and talk a small bit about featuring one other performer to play keyboard and rap on two songs in the set. Oliver was my rock throughout the initial stages of planning this show and it wouldn’t have succeeded on the scale that it did if he didn’t help me. For reference, here’s a snappy little list of the things that he did to help me prepare for this meeting and beyond:

  1.  Oliver helped me prepare the documentation for the meeting by taking note of what I had already written down and organizing it into a template that I could flesh out in time for the meeting. This allowed me to take the grandiose vision I had of the show that made me overwhelmed in the past and ground it in reality; what can actually be achieved on a low budget by college students. 
  2. He helped me narrow down the initial set list which was massive in my documentation. He encouraged me to only pick a handful of songs I liked. Once we had decided on the songs, we ordered them into sections based on what games they were from (Persona 3 songs would go first, then Persona 4 songs, then Persona 5 songs) and marked which ones would have instrumental accompaniment or feature another performer. After the list was cut down the set had 11 songs, but I was going to have Oliver feature as a violinist for two songs and would later on recruit Joe to do keyboard and rapping parts. 
  3. During the initial meeting, Oliver redirected me whenever I went on tangents regarding music production, recruiting performers, or theatrics. Since this meeting was with the club that was going to be doing visuals for us, everything else had to be kept to a minimum. I didn’t have a lot of experience conducting meetings so this was incredibly helpful.
  4. Oliver took on the role of logistics coordinator as he chose to handle the club council interactions that would allow us to reserve and decorate the space for the event as needed. 

Space Reservations

Oliver had a bit of trouble getting a hold of club council to schedule a meeting for reserving a space for the concert. When we thought we had secured a date, it ended up being moved around a couple times until we could get in contact with them. We showed up with our documentation and I described what kind of stage, decorations, and refreshments we might want for the show. We were looking to hold it in the ARC some time during spring quarter. They gave us a couple dates and times we could reserve the ARC for the concert and the best one was on May 30th. During hell week. The show would literally be put on during the time of the quarter where people are hunkering down to catch up on schoolwork or studying for finals. Neither of us wanted it because we knew we’d be risking low attendance but it was the best option they gave us so we took it. All that was left to do was actually get ready for the show and a big part of that was practicing.

I had scheduled a when2meet with the two of them and asked Oliver to reserve the usability studio in the discovery hall for us to practice. He was able to reserve the usability studio for the next month up until the show, which was good, but also very stressful because we would only have a month to practice. Because we’d be only playing some parts from the musescore arrangements I prepared, I exported the audio of the parts that wouldn’t be played and put them in a timeline on GarageBand so we could play along to them. Before our reservation of the media space started, I was able to get Joe to practice with me on campus outside of the library. Which was pretty fun as we gave the campus a little sneak peek into what we had prepared.

Creating Key Visuals for Artists

Gearing up for the show, I also had to create a more organized mood board of visuals for the artists. I created a chaotic set of potential visuals in the meeting notes, but the artists creating the visuals wanted a more specific set of references to work with so I decided to create a canva presentation which was basically one massive moodboard. Since the entire set list would have three sections categorized by songs from a singular game, I wanted the visuals to reflect that heavily. The presentation I ended up creating consisted of the following: 

  • A slide denoting each section of the set list and a color palette to go with the corresponding Persona game
  • Default visuals for each section
  • Specific visuals to transition from one section to the next.

Both of the artists I had recruited were in their senior year working on their capstone projects so it was very important to emphasize which parts would require the most effort and which ones they could cut corners on. 

Advertising

 As the concert date creeped closer and closer, advertising became a much more concerning factor. And a big part of that was coming up with an official name for the concert. I had always referred to it as the Persona concert but Oliver thought that was uninspired so we sent out a Google form for people to suggest what the name of the concert should be. We got a lot of suggestions ranging from ones that I thought really captured the essence of the show and its set list to very funny ones. Eventually, I decided to make a list of my top 5 and originally, the name I had chosen for the show was at the very bottom of the list. But it rose to the top quickly when I had drafted a poster design that I thought would complement the name well. The next step was to actually make official posters.

 I had planned on designing the posters in Clip Studio Paint as I thought at the time that would make the advertising process go by faster. For reference, the show was over a month away and I was looking at getting 3-4 weeks of advertising. I then had to bite the bullet as I realized I still had backing tracks to finish mixing at the time and tried to lend the task over to the Digital Arts Club. They denied the request to make the poster since they had only agreed to do visuals as part of their collaboration, but redirected me to the Multimedia Graphic Designers. With the help of Oliver, I filled out a form that described what logos we would need on the poster, the poster colors, along with a google drive link of the draft design I had sketched. After communicating with the graphic designer and waiting for her revisions, I got a result I was proud of and it was time to start putting up posters on campus. CEB was advertising a prom event which was happening around a similar time so we made sure to post our flyers next to theirs. We also got sandwich boards, one of which we put outside the library and another of which was outside the ARC. For online spaces, we posted the flier in the Bothell Beats discord, the UWB discord, the Digital Arts Club discord, and other respective UWB club servers such as Husky Gaming Club and Husky Game Dev. I also made sure to post about it on my personal Instagram account once the final draft of the poster was finished along with a very heartfelt description.

What The Show Was Like

Actually doing the concert was an incredible experience. Pretty much all of my friends were there and considering that the show was held during dead week, we got pretty good attendance. The audience gave me such joy and made it such an incredible experience. It was transcendental almost. I had so much anxiety about whether people would enjoy the show, how I would be perceived on stage, but in the moment, it felt like so much of that didn’t matter and all the work I had put in paid off. I did what I always wanted to do: to share music from my favorite video game series with the people I love, to perform songs that mean so much to me. And finally, I finally had the perfect outlet for that. But more importantly, I finished a large scale project which is such a rare accomplishment for me and I had put on a major performance after so many years. I was reminded of what I love about performing, the adrenaline rush of being on stage, the comradery felt in connecting with an audience, and just an overall ability to be myself, physically and mentally. Not just that, but an ability to feel in tune with myself, which is something I don’t get very often being a busy college student. 

Reflection and Conclusion

Most of the things that I wish could have been better don’t necessarily correlate with the end product itself, but more so with the process. I wish I could have started earlier and allowed my vision of the show to be more malleable to constraints and resources in the beginning. I’d rather reverse engineer my way to a possible final result than thinking everything must match the exact vision I have in my mind and forcing myself to be perfect in the process. I think my perfectionist mindset and my executive dysfunction definitely fed off of each other in that regard for the entire project. I also wish I could’ve prioritized this project rather than forcing myself to do a million things at the same time because many parts of this project took up more space in my life than I initially thought I would. I’d also want to make sure to stay in contact with any mentors that could help me during the initial stages. The last thing, I seriously wish I could’ve delegated more tasks to people than forcing myself to do almost everything. While the Digital Arts Club was working on visuals and Oliver was handling a lot of logistics, I was left with pretty much everything else and that was extremely overwhelming. Even in regards to little things like mixing tracks or transcribing sheet music, I think I should’ve accepted help more quickly so I could focus on being a better leader. Even with all of the things that I would do differently next time, this project was a major success in regards to learning leadership skills, helping Bothell Beats cross new frontiers, and most importantly performing the music of a video game series that allowed me to pursue my true self. And yes, that is a Persona reference.