Music that is special to me - International Disney and Penn Masala

Hello, everyone! Hope you're all having a good day.

First of all, I just wanted to acknowledge the most recent changes that I've made to this blog, overhauling its name to "Russian to Finnish," the new description and little flag icon, and so on. This switch was made in preparation for my swiftly upcoming junior year of college abroad in Russia and Finland! In ten days (which feels so surreal to write), I will leave for a semester at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, Russia, with which my home institution of Beloit College has a long-standing direct exchange partnership, followed by a semester studying at an as of yet undisclosed location in Finland, as the external organization I'm going with, ISEP, has yet to place me in one of my three top-choice Finnish universities, those being the Universities of Helsinki, Turku, and Tampere. This year will be the culmination of so many academic and personal goals for me that I've carried within me for so long - in Russia I will be able to deepen my fluency and cultural knowledge of a language and an area of the world that has come to captivate me in my college years and out of which I've forged a major and an academic path, and in Finland I will finally get to explore a place and begin to learn a language that I've yearned to since I was eleven years old.

As nervous as I may be from the prospect of being away that long in unfamiliar places, and just from the generic jitters that come from such a prospect, my heart is overflowing with joy and anticipation. I'm so excited to share my thoughts, reflections, adventures, and even faux pas as I embark on this long awaited journey.

Anyway, that was a slightly longer-than-expected explanation. This post, as the clever among you may have guessed from the title, is about music which is special to me! Specifically international Disney songs and Penn Masala.

Anyone who has ever talked to me for more than five minutes will surely know that I'm a giant language nerd, and anyone who has ever talked to me for more than twenty will probably know about my love of Disney movies.
In many ways, they're two things that have always been connected, and indeed have built off of and fed each other to some extent.
I enjoyed some of the classic Disney Renaissance movies to a great extent in my childhood, in particular The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Fox and the Hound, and in more recent years have also seen and grown to greatly appreciate Mulan, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Moana. on. Or, more appropriately, Il Re Leone, La Sirenetta, La Bella e la Bestia, Red e Toby, Mulan, Il Gobbo di Notre Dame, and Oceania, because I actually watched most of those videos, along with a lot of other shows, films, and children's media, in my native language of Italian throughout much of my childhood - one of the many ingenious methods used by my parents to ensure that we maintained a certain level of bilingualism in our Italian-American household.

For a couple of years, I didn't really watch them that often. And in sixth grade, when I was twelve years old, between hosting an AFS exchange student from Italy in our house (and meeting his AFSer friends from around the world and hearing more about my own mother's memories of her time as an AFSer from Italy to Tennessee back in 1978 as a result) and checking out these books about different countries from my local library, I began to fall deeply in love with foreign countries, cultures, and in particular, languages. Strangely enough, however, for quite a time I made these giant lists of languages that interested me, basically adding any of them that I came across in those books I mentioned that seemed interesting, getting them up to fifty strong - but without ever really knowing how most of them sounded spoken.
About a year later, I was perusing the Internet as per usual, and for some reason found myself listening to the familiar tune of the song "the Circle of Life" from The Lion King, but in the warm and rich Italian version sung by Ivana Spagna that I had listened to countless times in my childhood.
Suddenly, the thought popped into my head that if an Italian version existed, surely there would be others in dubs of other languages that interested me.
So I typed in "Circle of Life Arabic." Then Finnish. Then Brazilian Portuguese. European Portuguese. Hungarian. Dutch. Japanese. Chinese. Anything that interested me, and that I could think of. I still to this day have very vivid memories of those moments, as I sat there, spellbound, searching for that one simple and familiar song in language after language, finally listening to the true sounds of these foreign tongues that had interested me in theory for so long already, bewitched by the unfamiliar tones and cadences that linked them together, which further ignited a burning desire within me to know them, to decipher them.
In that moment, I knew for sure that learning many languages was a direction which I wanted my life to take.

This wasn't just limited to "the Circle of Life." In the coming days and months after that defining day, I began to search for the other songs from The Lion King soundtrack and other Disney movies I'd seen in different languages, and what has ended up happening since then is that I get temporarily obsessed with different, specific songs for periods of time, searching through all the different versions I can find on YouTube, to the point where I come to associate the songs with different times in my life. For seventh grade, it was "the Circle of Life." For eighth grade, it was "I Just Can't Wait to Be King," also from The Lion King, and "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas. For ninth grade, it was "Honor to Us All" and "Reflection" from Mulan. For late tenth grade into the beginning of eleventh grade, it was "I Won't Say I'm in Love" from Hercules. For eleventh grade, it was "God Help the Outcasts" and "Heaven's Light/Hellfire" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and, of course, the mother of all overplayed songs that year, "Let It Go" from Frozen. For freshman year of college, it was "I See the Light" from Tangled. And for this past year, unsurprisingly given my multiple posts about my favorite versions of "How Far I'll Go," would be the entire Moana soundtrack, but particularly "How Far I'll Go" and "I am Moana." 
The latter has become one of my favorite songs of all time, a beautiful tune fusing the comforting and encouraging words of Moana's grandmother Tala, and an empowering inward determination to overcome her obstacles and achieve her goals. It's a song whose versions I listen to in times of uncertainty, happiness, joy, achievement, anger, and even devastating sadness, and I find it always helps me to feel better.

In any case, as can easily be seen, these Disney songs in different languages are something truly special to me. Aside of often espousing positive and empowering messages of finding or being yourself, or containing nostalgic childhood significance, they have been a force that has inspired, driven, and helped me to learn foreign languages, which is my greatest passion in life. And as someone who has enjoyed and followed Disney dubbing for different movies closely for quite some time, it's fascinating to see the different ways in which the field has evolved. For instance, back when I first started to enjoy the dubs, the Russian ones were a little lower-quality from an acoustic standpoint, and it was difficult to find the official soundtrack versions on YouTube. Now, they've honestly stepped up their game immensely, and the Russian Moana soundtrack is one of my very favorites.

New languages are constantly emerging. Recently Mulan and The Lion King have been dubbed into Armenian. The Lion King has been dubbed (albeit sometimes with admittedly dubious quality) into Turkic minority languages from Russia such as Abaza, Karachay-Balkar, Kabardian, and Crimean Tatar! Several movies have been dubbed into Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Indonesian, Malay, Marathi, Romanian, Persian, Serbian, Slovene, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese, and voiced over into Georgian and Uzbek. Sometimes for specific movies where a particular language might be geographically or culturally pertinent, a special dub will be made, such as the Zulu dub of The Lion King, the Tahitian and Maori dubs of Moana, and the Navajo dub of Finding Nemo (okay that last one doesn't make a huge amount of sense but come on how cool is that???).

Observing developments such as those I've just mentioned makes me indescribably happy. There is truly power in representation of different groups, and the availability of media in different languages. I know for me that even outside of my immense passion for languages in general, growing up as a bilingual child, my consumption of this media in different languages was one of the most effective and enjoyable forces that ensured my continuing skills in my native language growing up in a place where I was not surrounded by it day by day. Especially for languages that may be lesser-spoken or endangered, children are the future, as the hope for continuing use of the language, so ensuring that they have materials and resources at hand such as these that can not only be used, but enjoyed, are a priceless asset to language survival.

So thank you, Disney. Your foreign dubs have inspired and empowered my dreams in so many ways, and for that I will always be grateful.

And now Penn Masala!
Penn Masala is an a cappella group from the University of Pennsylvania which mainly does fusion songs between American pop and Bollywood hits. I first heard them when they made a brief appearance in one of the Pitch Perfect movies which I saw during a movie night my freshman year of college, and being captivated by their vocal talent and multilingual songs.
From there I listened to a ton of their old albums from over the years, and have avidly followed and thoroughly enjoyed the two others that have been released since I started listening to their music.

Somewhat similarly to the different Disney songs, I've listened to some Penn Masala albums so much that they've come to remind me of different times in my life. Panoramic reminds me of my very first semester of college, the cool breezes and fiery foliage of autumn in southern Wisconsin, walks to early morning classes, and the jittery adventures as I began to discover and expand my passions and academic paths. Resonance reminds me of the end of my first semester, my long-awaited and incredible return to my beloved Turkey, and the beginning of the second semester. And their most recent album, Yuva, reminds me of the still cool but sunny Midwestern spring as my most recent semester of college came to a close, and my greatly anticipated first return to Ann Arbor that soon followed.
Having been a part of an a cappella choir my senior year of high school and greatly enjoyed it, I always love listening to other groups singing a cappella, and Penn Masala's immense talent is no exception. By listening to their music, I've come to discover and appreciate the original versions of the Hindi, Urdu, and Bangla hits that they include in their masterful mashups, which are often combined based on connected themes and messages within the songs. Most of their music is very energetic and bouncy, which always makes me happy when listening to it, and most of what isn't is calmer and more soothing, the sort of thing that I love listening to in order to fall asleep.

Penn Masala has eventually become one of my favorite musical groups. Their talent and innovative musical multilingualism has brought me much happiness, and introduced me to the linguistic and musical beauty of some of the world's richest and most fascinating cultures.

*There doesn't seem to be an all-album video up on YouTube for Yuva, so I'm just going to link some of my favorite songs from that album, among some favorites from the others. Enjoy!*

In any case, I hope that beyond all the gushing and fangirling, I've managed to get my point across, and perhaps even interest some of the rest of you to take the plunge with me.
If you search for pretty much any song - or clip, for that matter - from a Disney movie you love in a different language that interests you, or a multilingual version, chances are you'll find it. And if you check out Penn Masala on their YouTube channel, iTunes, or Spotify, for all the reasons mentioned above and more, I guarantee that you won't regret it.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Be back soon. 

The truth of studying Turkish in Azerbaijan

Herkese merhaba.

As promised, I'm back to spit some hot fire of truth on what it's like to learn Turkish in Azerbaijan. Disclaimer: this is purely my own opinion, based on my own experiences and observations having been someone who has studied Turkish in Azerbaijan. I in no way claim to represent CLS, American Councils, or any other organization, or their views and policies.

Okay, so let's start with a little linguistic background:
The only official language in Azerbaijan is Azerbaijani, which is a Turkic language of the Oghuz branch. It shares a lot of common grammatical, phonetic, and syntactical similarities with Turkish, and the two languages are reputed to have varying degrees of mutual intelligibility, even as high as 90%. However, Azerbaijani preserves a lot of older Arabic and Persian-based vocabulary, never having been subjected to Ataturk's reforms in Turkey that purged these in favor of more ancient, Turkic-based root words, as well as many Russian loan words as a legacy from their belonging to the Soviet Union. What language people speak natively at home varies by family and experience, but nearly everyone in Azerbaijan is bilingual in Azerbaijani and Russian, as those who grew up in the Soviet Union were educated in it, and it continues to be an important language of business, international outreach, and education in Azerbaijan today. Interestingly, this is not based on ethnic affiliation; by and large, most Azerbaijanis who speak Russian at home or with their families are not ethnic Russians themselves, but simply ethnic Azeris who chose to use Russian, often as a way to indicate appreciation for Russian culture, or as a slightly bougie status symbol.

Turkish is widely understood in Azerbaijan, as most people in the country grow up with extensive exposure to Turkish through their consumption of Turkish media, and the two languages are, as previously mentioned, connected through many shared linguistic roots. In many cases, the younger generation is typically more adept at understanding and especially at actually speaking Turkish, as it's only been in more recent years that this consumption of Turkish media has become commonplace. Back in Soviet times, most outside media was coming in from Russia, especially given the fact that Azerbaijani identity grew largely due to Russian influence as a "divide and conquer" method to separate Azerbaijani and Turkish identity to prevent them from allying with Turkey and fleeing Soviet control.

In all honesty, at least for me, learning Turkish in Azerbaijan was a very frustrating experience much of the time. Much as people claim to be able to understand or speak Turkish, or that the two languages are "the same," it often feels like neither of those are true. Even native speakers of one of the two languages often struggle to make heads or tails of the other, and so for me and most of my group, as imperfect speakers that only really knew haphazard Turkish at best, making sense of Azerbaijani beyond a very simple level was near impossible.
Locals find it difficult to perceive this difference, somewhat optimistically calling their language "Azeri Turkish" and saying "Why? It's the same," when asked to speak "Istanbul (read: ACTUAL) Turkish."

I'll be honest in saying that a lot of the time, I struggled to communicate with people. Even though I did find myself picking up on bits and pieces of it over time, I was never able to understand it beyond a most basic level, and certainly not at a true, native fluidity and speed. It got frustrating, to the point that at times I would avoid speaking to people in public at all costs because I figured that it was pointless - we wouldn't be able to understand each other anyway. I was never able to have meaningful conversation with my non-Turkish speaking Azeri host mother without her niece there to translate for us.

The reason I'm writing this post is for it to serve as something of a reality check and insider perspective for anyone who might be planning to embark on some program to study Turkish in Azerbaijan, as given the current security situation and travel warning out on Turkey by the State Department, a number of, particularly government-funded, programs for Turkish study have been moved to Azerbaijan.

Be prepared for people to adamantly insist that they are speaking "the same language" as you when you have absolutely no idea what they're saying. Be prepared for there to be a glaringly obvious discrepancy between what you're learning academically, and literally every other aspect of your day-to-day life on the ground. Be prepared for what you study in the classroom to feel like it has no practical value as soon as you step off of campus into the real city. Be prepared to be frustrated and aggravated at times - potentially frequently. Be prepared to feel discouraged and angry at times, to feel like you're not accomplishing what you came to do, that you can't. Be prepared for your frustrations to occasionally amount to so much that you resent being there. Be prepared to cherish any truly Turkish-speaking teachers, friends, language partners, or host family you may have, as they will be the most crucial force in the improvement of your actual Turkish language skills.

Be prepared to be exposed to a truly fascinating, dynamic, and multilingual place with a diverse and unique history at the crossroads of so many worlds. But that is not, ultimately, what you set out to learn.

I'm sorry that this is somewhat negative, but these are my honest feelings on what this experience consisted of for me. And I think that since organizations and locals on the ground alike can be very big into the whole bullshit "they're basically the 'same' language" narrative, it's important for people venturing into such an experience to be aware of the reality of what they're getting themselves into.

Final Azerbaijan update and return

Hello, everyone.

So this is going to be my last little blurb on the blogosphere under the current "AzerbayCANIM" title, before I overhaul the blog a little in preparation for my junior year abroad in Moscow, Russia, and Finland.

I dropped off the grid a little towards the end of my CLS program, and I apologize for that. Usually in my past exchanges, I would blog much more meticulously, writing every so often (usually on a weekly basis) and making organized lists, careful to discuss everything noteworthy that I wished to share in detail. But for some reason, this time around I didn't feel the need to be so zealous about it, content instead to just write more periodically, giving more general and nebulous accounts of my feelings, the everyday.

The time that passed since my last post was probably one of the best periods of the whole program. In these last few weeks, I'd basically hit my stride. The challenges were still challenging, but I'd reached a point where overall I felt like I'd come to an understanding, made my peace with them, and knew how to roll with the punches. I reevaluated my goals, and came to acknowledge, validate, and be proud of my own gains in Turkish, aided by the gracious praise and support of my fellow CLSers. I grew closer to a number of really awesome people, who I hung out with on a continuously regular basis. There were unexpected five-hour conversations about love and the universe resulting from just casually bumping into people; wanderings along the Caspian coast; meals at some of Baku's few and far-flung foreign restaurants; and an amazing evening on our last full day in town that ended with the five of us lying down by the edge of the water, a bizarre but beautiful atmosphere of peace and quiet in the air (as it was nearly 2), and I sat there thinking how that was such an unexpected and beautiful way for it all to come to a close.

Two days ago, we returned to the States. Given how far away Azerbaijan is, grueling travel time is part of the package if you're not on Azerbaijan Airlines' single direct US-bound flight to JFK, and so we left the country on a 5:15 am flight to Frankfurt. My goodbye with my host family was heartfelt and sad, but also felt rather rushed. We took a bus to Heydar Aliyev International Airport together from the university, with our final view on the dynamic and dramatic neon flashes of the city's oil money architecture lighting up the night just as they had done when we took that same bus ride in the opposite direction, immediately following our arrival.

After check-in, I hung around with my friends Giovanna, John, and Jordi as we tried to buy our time before seeing Giovanna off, as she was flying directly to her family in Italy rather than back to the States with us. That goodbye was by far one of the most emotional, and it was hard to get started on it so early.

I stayed up long enough to watch a bit of the sunrise over the Caspian, my mounting deliriousness furthering my disbelief that we were leaving, before crashing against the window.
Our four hour layover in Frankfurt passed uneventfully enough; I splurged on sushi, a salmon sandwich, and a smoothie, because I was tired, hungry, wanted to treat myself, and still had a little left of my stipend to blow. Not really much noteworthy happened, at least that I remember, because I was kind of sleep deprived to the point of losing it at that point. Our RD Cat was flying to see her American family in Philadelphia before flying home to Istanbul, so we saw her off there before getting on our flight. I feel lucky to have had Cat as my RD both on NSLI-Y and CLS; with some of the obstacles I faced, particularly the craziness of switching host families, it was really nice to have a supportive and determined person who I already knew and felt comfortable around at the helm.
The flight back to DC was standart (a common Turkish-based inside joke of ours meaning "so-so"). I watched Aladdin, went around having people sign my travel journal as I always do. I actually spent a lot of time standing up. Not much else to report.

Landing back in DC felt very surreal. My sleep deprivation at that point was pretty aggressive, and after two months of adjusting to the complete unknown, it all threw me for a loop.
With many of us that were left at that point leaving for gates in different areas, we said our goodbyes near one of the entrances to the interterminal train. Slightly delirious hugs and sweet parting words, which were heartfelt in the utmost, but slightly rushed and sudden, which left me feeling, for sheer lack of better terminology, shook. My community of CLSer friends were by far the silver lining of my program, a source of fun, learning, and support in the times when I most needed it, who I saw nearly every day for two months, and so just suddenly being by myself waiting for my flight home to St Louis was very strange.

That airport has been a site for so many important and sad goodbyes for me. First coming home from NSLI-Y, and now CLS as well. I felt very wistful and nostalgic sitting there alone, flashing back to all these moments from when I returned from NSLI-Y and said goodbye to my friends from that program in basically the same place, and also flashing back to when I arrived back in June for PDO, so full of excitement and anticipation to delve headfirst into the unknown, reveling in how bizarre it was to be back in these familiar spaces with all of the lived experience I'd looked forward to now behind me.

I read the notes they'd left in my journal by the gate, which were moving and empowering testaments to how amazing they are as people, and cried a little.
The rest is kind of a blur at that point, and not all that interesting to boot. Flight to STL, mostly spent sleeping; Uber home and spending a night by myself because my family was out of town and had a delayed return due to a canceled flight; seeing them again, etc.
As disappointed as I was not to see them an extra night, it was kind of nice after two months of so much craziness and intense activity to have a while completely by myself to process everything.

And so an adventure that I'd aspired to since high school came to an end.

I've only been home two days at this point, and haven't done too much yet, as I've been mainly focused on trying to shake off my intense jetlag and prepare my visa application for my next big adventure to Moscow, coming up on September 7.
Being back has been great so far in terms of seeing my family, being in an environment that I feel fully comfortable in culturally and can navigate with far less difficulty and second-guessing, and enjoying all the things I missed while I was away.
To part ways (for now) with wonderful people that I connected so well and so easily with was not easy. But I feel lucky that I made friendships that made parting ways so hard, and hope to see people again soon.

This summer was one of the most insane and complex experiences of my life so far. As much as I tried not to have any expectations, and indeed even arrived not really having any clear idea of what to expect, I think that deep down I thought CLS would be like NSLI-Y, and Azerbaijan would be like Turkey, neither of which are true, the latter far more difficult to deal with. I'll be blatantly honest in saying that Azerbaijan is not an easy place to live, and trying to study Turkish there has a lot of unique challenges that were extremely frustrating, to the point that at times I admittedly even resented being there. But after I came to terms with the frustrations I was facing, allowed myself to acknowledge them and handle them in healthier ways, I was able to focus on taking full advantage of the Turkish immersion I did have in class, and enjoy the beautiful things that I was able to see and experience as a product of being in Azerbaijan specifically.

In spite of the real and numerous frustrations I faced, I came away from this experience with amazing friendships, greatly improved Turkish skills, and overall a stronger, more knowledgeable, and more experienced person, and I'm grateful for it. Whatever may have been, the view of gray gorges and lush emerald forests from the Gelersen Gorersen castle ruins in the mountains by Sheki, the gently rising and falling waves of the harbor in Bulvar, the winding cobblestone streets of Icheri Shehir, the supreme tranquility of the Grand Synagogue in Qirmizi Qesebe, the cool mist of Ilisu Waterfall, and so many more places, will always hold a special place in my heart.

Thank you for everything, Azerbaijan. I will always be proud of and miss this life-changing experience, and hope to see you again someday.

In coming days, I think I will write a little more on some subjects related to my CLS experience, namely a post on difficulty/going home early/changing host families, and also a post going into greater detail of what it is like - or at least, I should say, what it was like specifically for me - to learn Turkish in Azerbaijan, as between CLS, Indiana University Flagship, and others, there seem to be a number of Turkish language programs that, for better or worse, are set to take place in Azerbaijan for the foreseeable future, and I think there's a lot to be said about that, which I intend to put in my two cents in on.

Anyway, thank you all as usual for reading, and for following my chronicles and thoughts as I ventured through this adventure that I'd dreamt of for four years.

Another beautiful mashup from Smellsliketwinspirit!