Reporting by Fazris Rifai
(Zaman Al Wasl)- The brutality of war, scenes of bombing and destruction did not affect the psyche of the triplets Sedra, Salam, and Sara Amran born in Damascus in 2005 and their brother Omar born in 2007. They have all managed to move away from the difficult atmosphere they experienced through a special experiment they conducted.
They recorded a small educational video for the most important simple conversations circulated on a daily basis among Turks and published it on a Facebook page they started with that aim entitled “Speak Turkish” without fees or a return.
Since its establishment in August 2016, the page has acquired 29000 likes and 17,000 followers from different age groups children, youths, university students among them. The page is rated at 4.9 out of 5.
In 2013, the three sisters, their brother and family were living in one of the neighborhoods in Damascus when the building they lived in was bombed by the regime forces. Their house burnt as a result and the family was forced to leave Syria and take refuge in Turkey.
Relatively shortly after their arrival, the four siblings began studying in Najmi Kadi Oglu school, and they managed in a short time to learn to speak, write and read Turkish. Through their engagement with their peers in school they managed to learn most of the phrases and terms Turks use in their daily conversations.
They understood the meaning of the phrases and how things should be pronounced in Turkish. Given their possession of this talent, they decided as their mother said to Zaman al-Wasl, to film a short movie video with the phrases and common proverbs of the Turkish language in a comedic form. They wanted to help people learn Turkish as learning through books and memorizing words does not work for everyone.
Their mother, who holds a bachelor degree in trade and economics from Damascus University and has 7 years experiences as a teacher, started to help them to execute their idea. She films them, edits the videos, and manages the Facebook page.
Oum Omar added that the group started presenting some small films to understand followers’ responses and through two months of experimenting the page attracted over 19,000 followers and the number of video viewers exceeded 65,000 viewers.
An electronic newspaper wrote about the initiative and this placed more responsibility, as Oum Omar explained, on their shoulders to continue and the necessity of presenting the best they have especially after they witnessed the degree of people’s interest in the page and in the segments they upload, and the call for them not to delay posting more educational clips.
Oum Omar revealed that there are some who are bothered by the initiative especially those who work in the same field as the initiative is free and managed to attract many other page followers who left other pages and followed Speak Turkish. She indicated that, “there are many pages that teach the Turkish language and it was not in their interest for Speak Turkish to continue so they reported it and the page was closed down 10 days ago.”
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