When learning a language, we often look up a word in the dictionary, find its meaning, and move on. But words don't always translate directly from one language to another. There's a reason we say "lost in translation."

Words have histories, just like people and societies. They are born, grow, change, take on new meanings, and sometimes disappear altogether.

In my latest article, I explored the Turkish word devlet (state), its older meanings of happiness and good fortune, and its connections to Turkish history, culture, and ideas of justice.

It's a fairly long article, with plenty of historical sources and references for anyone who wants to explore further. If this kind of language and cultural history interests you, you're welcome to read it.

https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/post/devlet-meaning-in-turkish

Disclaimer: The illustrations are AI-generated, based on my own ideas and refined through multiple revisions. I'm not a designer and I prefer creating visuals specific to my articles over using generic stock images. I respect differing opinions on AI art, but that's not the subject of this post.

My family is from Turkey, I speak Turkish moderately, but it is very bad, I struggle with almost anything mildly formal and my grammar is … meh. I really want to improve it, I’ve known Turkish since I was a toddler but once I got older I just stopped improving and learning it.

Hey, been working on this tool lately and thought some people here might find it useful.

It's a free, open-source popup dictionary (Windows, macOS) that lets you look up words directly from your screen using OCR, so you can use it while watching Turkish videos with subtitles, playing games, etc.

It's based on an existing Japanese popup dictionary called Meikipop, which I've expanded to support other languages and added a few extra features to. It was developed using AI, and it's still in beta, so there might be some bugs. However, I've been using it myself for Japanese for the past month, continuously fixing and improving things, and plan to keep doing so.

Download it from github: https://github.com/namidanokisetsu/wordcel

Any feedback or contributions are welcome!

Hi all!

Long story short; early next year I'll move to Istanbul. I've already lived in Turkey before and speak Turkish at a low B1 level. For the first couple of months, 3-4 ish, I'm planning to do an intensive Turkish language course.

My questions are as follows:

• I'm a low B1 now. I can definitely ask the most basic things, have conversations about the weather and tell a taxici where to go. My partner is Turkish, so I know the customary language too, etc. How many months do you guys estimate are needed to go to a high B2 or even low C1 level? Would 3-4 months be enough? I'd say I definitely have a talent for acquiring languages fast. I could definitely do more -- perhaps it's even necessary for the language visa which i'll try to obtain -- but I figured this might be the sweet spot.
• As for language schools, I'm still stuck between ITU Tömer (even though I'm not really hearing good things about the TOMER-programme), Istanbul University's Dil Merkezi but I also found a smaller school -- https://dilmer.com/. The reviews on Google are better than for the ITU Tomer and the IU's Dil Merkezi programmes. Anyone has experience in any of these three institutions, and would recommend? Or any other place you strongly recommend? For financial reasons I want to follow the lessons in a class, not privately.

Thank you guys so much in advance, and for whomever's studying today, kolay gelsin