Teach Yourself Turkish

I lived in Turkey a long time ago and then was able to get along fine in Turkish. But after the absence I had forgotten nearly everything. I'm ashamed to admit that just before my 2001 trip to Turkey that I hardly remembered50 words. I was also totally dismayed to lose what I had worked so hard for. After my return, I bought the earlier edition of Asuman Celen's little book. I bought the new edition last January since my old book had totally fallen apart.Turkish believe it or not is NOT an intrinsically difficult language. What makes it much harder to most English speakers than say French, Italian, German, and so on, it is that it is utterly different from the Western languages. But I have told my Turkish friends many times that someone who native tongue is neither a Turkic or Western language, say a native speaker of Japanese, would find Turkish easier to learn than English.There are several reasons. First Turkish is put together so logically that I've heard a number of Turks call their language a form of mathematics. Also Turkish is very easy to pronounce (a lot easier than French or German for me). Turkish sounds are very easy for English speakers, and Turkish syllables most often only have two or three letters and one and only one vowel. Also Turkish has far fewer sounds than English and exploits this by having a perfect spelling system--there is one sound for each letter and one letter for each sound. Compare to English with such monstrosities as "tough", "although", and "thought" or "too", "two", and "to". Finally, and most importantly, Turkish grammar is completely regular--virtually no exceptions. Compare with English spelling and grammar and you will soon begin to appreciate how pleasant learning Turkish can be.What I love about Asuman's book is that she skillfully exploits Turkish's simplicity to provide a book that is remarkably easy to learn from because of its gradual build up approach, and also a pleasure to read as Turkish's remarkable structure emerges like the development of a Polaroid photograph.The strongest point of the book is the way she develops Turkish grammar. She builds it up starting from it's simplest elements and soon adds Turkish's all pervasive vowel harmony and suffix structure. After laying this foundation, in the fourth chapter she introduces Turkish's simplest tense, the present continuous. The beauty of Turkish is that even this tense show many of the principles used in much more complex Turkish grammatical constructions. Then in each chapter she adds a few small bricks and one very big one, as she builds up the Turkish language. By the last chapter she has given the reader a very solid intermediate level knowledge of Turkish. As an example of what I mean is that the dialogues of the last chapter (each chapter has two graded dialogues) are everyday conversational Turkish. Oh incidentally, my Turkish returned and it's now at a lot higher level than I came back from Turkey. I have, of course, had to go to more advanced sources than Ms. Celen's text. But her wonderful little book was a great place to start.

The main reason I chose Teach Yourself Turkish was because the customer reviews said it is outstanding. The customers are right, it is very good. So far I've completed half the course and looked ahead at the grammar and coursework to come and am delighted with it.You'll find plenty of praise for the course in the other commentaries; I leave it to you to check them and won't repeat those points. I'll add:1) The authors have a genuine enthusiasm for teaching us Turkish. This comes through in their work and makes it an enjoyable experience to follow them through the dialogues, explanations and exercises they put together for us.2) The dialogues are very up to date, contemporary and relevant to what we will actually want to be able to say. And the dialogues are lively stories. Be sure to get the edition with the audio CD's. I believe a learner must hear a language to learn it correctly.3) The authors used judgment to choose what is necessary to learn for a basic level of Turkish language ability. A person needs to decide how much they want to learn, or to be practical, can learn in his or her circumstances. For example, there is the BBC Talk series on one end of spectrum for those who want to learn a few sentences before going to a foreign country for vacation, and there are 4 year university courses at the other end of the spectrum for those wanting in depth knowledge. Teach Yourself Turkish is in the middle and just right for me and many others who are self teaching at home.4) They put things together for us: for example, the various question words, p.62; prepositions of place chart, p. 76; exclamations, p. 101; very helpful summary, "buffer y, n or s," p. 108, and the liberal use of chart format to make things clear.5) They give us lots of practice, a lot of student involvement with various activities and exercises and plenty of audio to listen to (then we can listen and repeat).6) Finally, the English translation for all the dialogues in the book is available on request from the publisher:[email protected] [email protected] to attention of: Ginny Catmur, Teach Yourself BooksBeing able to have the English translations is very important for me since this is a Teach Yourself program; we don't have a classroom teacher to check our work. Do work out as much as you can the translation of the dialogue. This is working with and effectively studying the language. Then, with the translation of the dialogues we can check our work.You won't go wrong with this. It is as real good course.

I bought this book when I moved to Turkey two years ago, and I just finally got through it. I decided not to spend money on class after an initial month of an intensive course. Since then, I've been going through the book at home, and practicing outside the home whenever I can, and it's been a very effective combination for me. I think it was good to have a solid base with a teacher (and I'd done a full set of Pimsleur's Learning Turkish audio lessons before the class) to get the basic grammar down in a classroom setting. The book then complemented perfectly because - at a good, accessible pace - it adds on grammar concepts and vocabulary in each chapter. Turkish is grammatically complex and tricky for an English speaker (completely different sentence order and logic), and this book brought me through it with ease, with me putting the proper amount of effort into it.

excellent

レッスンごとに会話で始まり、その章のポイントが説明されている。中々良く出来ているテキストだと思います。著書も最初に言っているように、単語の意味がそこで分からなくても、そのまま何回も復習すれば良いと。。ただ、CDあるいはテープを併用して練習する事が、一番よいと思います。トルコ語の発音に慣れると思います。CD（Tape)はかなり普通の速度ではなされているので、何回も聞く方が良いかと思います。

This package "Teach Yourself Turkish" has lots of information, good value, easy to read, nice to have both a book and audio .

Dieses Buch sollte unbedingt als Komplettversion (also mit den 2 CDs) erworben werden. Der Aufbau ist sehr gut und bewährt. Es geht relativ schnell los, obgleich ich bereits vorher Türkisch gelernt habe und diesen Kurs nur als Auffrischung benutze, insofern kann ich nicht wirklich beurteilen, wie der Kurs für Komplett-Anfänger ist.Die Konstruktionen sind für die Türkei gedacht, dass fand ich besonders gut, denn die Wörter, das sind wirklich die Ausdrücke und Wörter, die vorkommen. Natürlich würde ich empfehlen, dass jemand, der ernsthaft Türkisch lernen will, sich zusätzlich in einen Kurs begibt oder eine andere Form der Verbindlichkeit schafft, aber mit diesem Kurs kann man sehr weit kommen und man hat eine sehr gute Aussprache auch im Sinn. Am Anfang sollte sich der Lernende viel Zeit für die Vokalharmonie nehmen, denn darauf basiert Türkisch und nur, wer diese beherrscht, kann die nächsten Schritte machen.Letztlich ist dies eine sehr gute, preiswerte und praktikable Einsteigermöglichkeit. Leider gibt es auf Deutsch kein Äquivalent, aber die englischen Wörter und Ausdrücke sind sehr einfach, das stellt kein wirkliches Problem für einen gebildeten Menschen dar. Meiner Meinung nach ist nur das Buch oder nur die CDs nicht wirklich sinnvoll, weil gerade der Anfänger mit der Aussprache lernen muss, ich würde also dazu raten, das Komplettpaket zu kaufen.

As expected from the "Teach Yourself" series, the book delivers a step-by-step course to lay a foundation for understanding and speaking. What I like is the authors' enthusiasm and appreciation for the beauty of Turkish -- its structure, indeed, is a marvel for anyone who studied at least one foreign language. On the other hand, I wish the dialogues would have translations, as well as all the new words being introduced. The way it is, I need to find some translations on Google, as not even the vocabulary at the end of the book contains them (like the word 'ay'/'month', 'abla'/'sister' etc). It seems to be unnecessarily challenging or directed at people who already have some knowledge of the language:).