Merhaba! My name is Karenna, and I am a junior at the University of Pittsburgh where I am majoring in International Studies, English Writing, and Turkish. Before enrolling in American Councils’ Eurasian Regional Language Program (ERLP) I had taken two years of Turkish at Pitt. Although my dad is Turkish and I have visited Turkey over a dozen times, I had never formally studied the language until college. That can be attributed to a couple of reasons: 1) Turkish is a less-commonly taught language and not available in most high schools, and 2) My mom is Colombian, so my parents had a tough time teaching me three languages at once (and my brain was having none of it; I didn’t speak at all until I was relatively old). I decided to finally learn Turkish because I longed to connect with my heritage, and because the events of the 2016 coup d’etat and major shifts in the Turkish economy were topics that were directly affecting me and my family at the time. Studying Turkish was one of the best decisions of my life. I received a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for Turkish and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, a Critical Language Scholarship, and a Boren Scholarship. The amount of funding available for less-commonly taught languages pleasantly surprised me, especially because I’ve come across a lot of scrutiny when I say I’m studying Turkish (although it is one of the top 20 most spoken languages in the world, and a State Department Critical Language).
This year I am studying Turkish in Baku, Azerbaijan, which contrary to popular belief is not the same as Turkey. Due to travel warnings imposed on Turkey, I was unable to study there. Azerbaijan and Turkey refer to themselves as “two nations, one state” due to their cultural and linguistic similarities. Since I was so familiar with Turkey, I was excited to experience a new country. I didn’t realize the challenges that would come with the experience, especially the fact that languages being 60% mutually intelligible means very little if you aren’t already fluent in one or the other. My biggest challenge while being here has been hearing Azerbaijani in daily life. Admittedly, I felt a bit defeated by it in the beginning (the Internet fails to capture how significantly different the languages sound and look to outsiders). I thought for sure my language learning would suffer, but in reality I feel like I have learned Turkish at a normal pace while also picking up a bit of Azerbaijani. One thing that my experience abroad has taught me is to embrace challenges.
The best thing about studying abroad is that you don’t just get to push your boundaries in the classroom, or in the community, but in totally unexpected ways. Last semester I completed my first hike, and it was in the worst of circumstances. It was 9.5km long, a 960m ascent, and through a solid foot of snow and ice - without any prior training, and with individuals who were much more experienced than me. Completing the hike was one of the most gratifying experiences of my entire life, and one that I would have never challenged myself to complete had I not been studying abroad. There is so much to learn while abroad, about your target language and about yourself. That isn’t to say that there aren’t challenges. I plateaued significantly both during my language studies and the mountain climb. In both instances, I felt like I was working hard and getting nowhere: studying daily and seeing little progress or pushing my legs to go faster and barely trudging through the snowcaps. Sometimes I would get frustrated and want to give up, but I kept going on both occasions. My mountain summit was successful, and apparently my language summit was as well. Although I finished the semester still feeling unsure about my progress, I saw my Oral Proficiency Interview score jump from an Intermediate-High in August to an Advanced-Mid in December. As someone who always struggled with languages, I never imagined that I could make it this far in my studies, but ERLP gave me the opportunity to do so. I strongly recommend studying or living abroad to anyone considering it, especially language learners and risk takers.
By: Karenna Oner
Program: Eurasian Regional Language Program, Baku, Azerbaijan
Term: Spring 2020