Mehmet’s dad helps me

Mehmet’s mom and dad are here. It is a new year, a new beginning as they say. What is my new year’s resolution?? Guess what??
By the time of the anniversary of my stroke I want to be more fluent in my speech. That’s all. I believe that goal is reachable. I mean, look at the progress I have made: from not being able to communicate at all, I am able gesture, mimic, speak at a conversational level… Surely I can speak more connectedly, more fluently in the next six months…
I must. There are so many things I want to do. First of all I want my son to be proud of me. As first generation immigrants, we already bring a different baggage to the table. I want to overcome that by integrating myself to my child’s life in an undisputable way: invite his friends over, get involved in the school, be friends with his friends’ parents…And do this in such a way so that my son wouldn’t be ashamed of introducing me around.
Everything on that front depends on effective communication skills.
Thank goodness I live in a community where people are so friendly. Every time I tell my story to someone they absolutely understand the hardship, congratulate the effort and genuinely go out of their way to accommodate.
In the new year (2007) Mehmet’s dad decides to help me on the Turkish language front. Every morning we sit down, I get my huge Turkish dictionary, starting from the letter “A”, we go down each page word by word, I pronounce each word. When I have difficulty pronouncing (which happens with every second or third word) he writes it down and works with me to hone it in.
We discover a method that works better than others: We call it “end to beginning method”. Especially with long words, you start with the last sounds and work your way to the first sounds. For example let’s say you want to say my name: “Banu Turhan”
You start with the last sound, when you have mastered it, move to the previous one :
An
Han
Urhan
Turhan
Uturhan
Nuturhan
Anuturhan
Banuturhan
I don’t know why, moving backwards works better for me. It just does. Maybe it is a quirk of the Turkish language, maybe not.
Mehmet’s dad works so diligently on this he even follows up with me. Only on the days I don’t feel well I get a break, otherwise I work on my mother tongue every day. If I get to publish my story in Turkish some day, I want to add a whole section with his work.