Anybody Try Turkish? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Anybody Try Turkish?
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

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brumblebee
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese

Message 9 of 21

20 June 2006 at 2:18pm | IP Logged

RogueRook wrote:

The bottom line: Very interesting, grammar that deserves its name and maybe equally difficult as japanese and korean save for the writing system.

Wow, I never realized that Turkish was so difficult! But I have never studied it myself, I do want to study it eventually though, maybe ten years from now!

brumblebee :)
1 person has voted this message useful

surfingnirvana
Newbie
United States
Joined 6815 days ago
37 posts - 45 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Armenian

Message 10 of 21

10 July 2006 at 7:37pm | IP Logged

Has anyone tried the TYS?

I was thinking of getting that :)

Does Colloquial offer a book, or Living Language?

-Alejo
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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

Message 11 of 21

03 March 2011 at 9:58am | IP Logged

daristani wrote:

Turkish is my major foreign language, and I've been using it off and on for many years now, including a number of years living in Turkey. I think of it as "an easy language that's hard to learn", in other words, there are many things that make it MUCH easier than many other languages people study: no sounds that are difficult to pronounce, a simple and very phonetic Latin-based alphabet, no gender differences for nouns (except for a masculine/feminine distinction in a few words borrowed from languages like Arabic) or even pronouns, essentially no irregular verbs, etc. (This extreme regularity of Turkish, once you become accustomed to it, can even spoil you a bit in terms of other languages, which then seem very "quirky" with all their genders, irregular forms, declined adjectives, etc.)

On the other hand, very little of the vocabulary of Turkish is cognate with words from Western languages, and the morphology and syntax, especially as one gets into the longer sentences that mark most formal writing, are an entire other dimension. I think of Turkish sentence structure as a sort of mental gymnastics, which is fun to play with but takes most speakers of Indo-European languages quite a long time to become halfway familiar with, let alone to master. Even people who've studied the language for quite some time can get irretrievably lost in some long sentences. Simply put, "the way Turkish works", while quite regular and in fact logical, is totally alien to the way we think and speak in languages like English, and getting used to this difference is a big job that takes a lot of time and effort. As in so much in language-learning, strong and consistent motivation is essential, and you need to put in effort over time to achieve mastery.

In terms of comparison with other Middle Eastern languages, like Arabic or Persian, Turkish is probably the easiest at the beginning, but gets a bit harder, I think, as one progresses. It's also not as rich in terms of literature or as important culturally as Arabic or Persian. On the other hand, Turkey is arguably the most socially and economically advanced Muslim country, and a knowledge of Turkish also helps one to learn the other Turkic languages spoken in Central Asia, so a good knowledge of Turkish can open the door to a lot of culturally and linguistically rewarding explorations.

Accordingly, I heartily recommend Turkish to aspiring polyglots, but with the warning that it isn't as easy as some of the initial lessons might make it appear. As for materials, the on-line FSI course noted above is certainly a useful resource. Other books I particularly like (since I used them a lot myself) are the book "Colloquial Turkish" by Yusuf Mardin (long out of print; not the current edition of "Colloquial Turkish"), "Teach Yourself Turkish" by Geoffrey Lewis (again long out of print, and not the current "Teach Yourself Turkish"), "Turkish Grammar" by Geoffrey Lewis, and once you're quite advanced, the new "Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar" by Asli Goksel and Celia Kerslake. The Redhouse dictionaries cited above, of which there are numerous different editions in different sizes, are also excellent. To my knowledge, such up-to-date and easy-to-use dictionaries are not available for Arabic or Persian, thus making Turkish in a sense the most "approachable" of the major Middle Eastern languages.

Although dating back to 2006, this is the most perceptive comment on Turkish I have seen on this forum.
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daristani
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7135 days ago
752 posts - 1661 votes

Studies: Uzbek

Message 12 of 21

04 March 2011 at 3:26pm | IP Logged

Thanks much for the kind words, William. It's also nice to see that someone is poking about in the old threads on the forum, as there's been an awful lot of interesting and useful advice conveyed in this forum over the years, including by a number of people who aren't around any longer.

As for Turkish, I don't think I'd change anything of what I expressed earlier in my typically long-winded way (those sometimes-interminable Turkish sentences have clearly affected my English!), but I thought it might be useful to note some instructional materials that have become available since that earlier comment was written.

As a textbook, Kurtulus Oztopcu's two-volume "Elementary Turkish" is, I think, the standard these days for university use, at least in the US. It's available through Amazon, and you can also get a feel for it at the author's website:

http://www.elementaryturkish.com/

(I confess I haven't used it myself, having learned Turkish years before it was published, but I think that anyone with an interest in tackling Turkish today would want to give it pretty serious consideration.)

Next, as a reference grammar, Routledge has recently published "Turkish: An Essential Grammar", which is much more user-friendly, especially for learners, than "Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar" cited above. (The latter is great for advanced learners and professional linguists, but is pretty heavy going for someone still learning.)

Finally, for learners with good German, Margarete I. Ersen-Rasch has recently published two highly useful books to follow on her excellent textbook ("Tuerkisch: Lehrbuch fuer Anfaenger und Fortgeschrittene") and reference grammar ("Tuerkische Grammatik fuer Anfaenger und Fortgeschrittene"). These are "Tuerkisch: Uebungsgrammatik A1 - C1" and "Tuerkisch fuer Fortgeschrittene: Grammatik - Texte - Uebungen". Both contain very sophisticated and nuanced grammatical explanations with lots of examples, as well as answer keys. They're published by Harrassowitz, and you can find part of the first-named on Googlebooks:

http://books.google.com/books?id=wVfLDHRq5EMC&printsec=front cover&dq=turkisch+ubungsgrammatik&source=bl&ots=0VxJhUASO8&s ig=YVEsoo6F9NfdtC3RrmKWfEZ7Af0&hl=en&ei=pfRwTfvyL4bGlQe5rolc &sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAjgU#v= onepage&q&f=false

The introduction and table of contents for the second one can be seen here:

http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/dzo/artikel/201/003/3910_2 01.pdf?t=1296032420

All of her books are excellent, and she gives many examples to show fine points of distinction among similar but not quite identical forms.

ADDENDUM:

For people who are already familiar with Turkish and interested in making the transition to the closely-related Azerbaijani, I recently discovered a very useful resource: It's a colorful, 242-page PDF file with an explanation of the most salient phonological and grammatical differences between the two languages, followed by a collection of reading selections with vocabulary lists for each. It's entitled "Korpu - Kopru: Turkish Bridge to Azerbaijani" and is quite well done. You have to sign in to Indiana University's Inner Asian and Uralic National Resources Center to get access to it. It took me two tries to do so, and there was a bit of delay before I could sign in to the site, but it was worth it, because the PDF file is very informative and has lots of practice reading material. The site is at:

http://www.indiana.edu/~iaunrc/our_resources/bridge.shtml

(Kurtulus Oztopcu, cited above, has also written a useful textbook of Azerbaijani, which can be found on his website.)

Edited by daristani on 04 March 2011 at 3:43pm
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Przemek
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Poland
multigato.blogspot.c
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107 posts - 174 votes

Speaks: Polish*, English, Spanish^C2, Italian, Portuguese, French
Studies: Turkish, Hindi, Arabic (Written)

Message 13 of 21

09 March 2011 at 10:42am | IP Logged

I learn Turkish (full time) and I must admit I quite like it. Maybe because I spent my holiday in Turkey three years ago and I fell in love with the country and the people who are very friendly and open towards others.
Turkish seems easy because it's very regular and agglutination system is very logical. On the other hand, grammar and structures work differently than in e.g. English or Spanish and it may cause some problems and it takes guite a lot of time to get used to.
I would not recommend Teach Yourself Beginner's Turkish unless you just want to get a glimpse of the language. It's better to get to regular study from Teach Yourself or Colloquial (unfortunately the latter has some minor errors).
Both have clear grammar explanations and plenty of vocabulary. At the moment I am using Colloquial, along with FSI Basic Course. The second has PLENTY of drills to help you to learn the structures. And you can download it for free, not only two parts of the books but also audio files what will give you HOURS and hours of listening and practising. (Some vocab it a bit outdated here as it's an old course.)
Pimsleur is not that good as it's too repetitive IMO, but it's good to listen to while you're traveling to school or work. It's extemely expensive too, not worth its price IMO.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Selamlar

Edited by Przemek on 11 March 2011 at 11:59am
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WentworthsGal
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Message 14 of 21

08 July 2011 at 9:28pm | IP Logged

I started teaching myself Turkish when I was 15 after a family holiday and falling in love with the people, the food and the music. This was back before my internet days lol so resouces were quite limited for me. Even the library I found rather useless. I did however find the Hugo Turkish in 3 Months book brilliant! I quickly managed to learn different endings for different meanings, especially after writing notes in a small notebook and practicing on the way home from school. I didn't find it too hard despite it being very different to English and it was a lot of fun to learn :o)

Have fun! x
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ungoo
Bilingual Pentaglot
Senior Member
Taiwan
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Speaks: English, Mandarin*, Taiwanese*, Cantonese, French
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Message 15 of 21

17 May 2012 at 7:34am | IP Logged

Digging up an old thread here...

I, too, fell in love with the country during a 5 days visit in 2012 Chinese New Year, and is putting the language on my list. I'm a firm believer that only if you're genuinely interested in a culture, you can make fast progress on learning their language..

So , in terms of resources, has anyone that speaks French tried the Assimil Turc, and could give some review on the quality of that? I'm more accustomed to the Assimil method...

David
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Sunja
Diglot
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Germany
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Message 16 of 21

19 May 2012 at 7:26pm | IP Logged

Does it have to be "Turc sans peine"? I have Assmil "Türkisch Ohne Mühe" (found it for 12 euros on Ebay). I have to say, the first 5 lessons are very painful. They're just too slow. You can get up and get a cup of coffee waiting for the next word. FSI Turkish is free but it's outdated. That was confirmed by onurdolar here in the forum. Before I got Assimil I used FSI. I tried saying the word "işte" to mean "look!" but my Turk-German student had no idea what I was saying. He's sixteen. :) I learned that it's better to say bak.

Anyway, I can't recommend Assimil beyond the first 10 lessons just because I haven't gotten that far yet, but I really like it so far! It gives clear explanations of the grammar -e/-a (to some place) 'da/'de (in someplace), -le/-la (with), and -dan/-den (from). I studied Japanese for a few years so I don't really have a problem how it piles on the particles. It suits me just fine. Like I said, it's slow in the beginning but the notes are nice and long so there's a lot to learn. I also like the fill-in-the-blank exercises at the end. Flipping through to the back, it's much more compact than the other Assmil books that I have. After about 20 lessons the text starts to get much longer, the print is smaller. In other words there's a lot of material. After lesson 30 they stop stressing the words with bold-type Günaydın Nesli hanım, nasılsınnız I'm not one to find that sort of thing necessary as long as I have audio, but it's nice to have as a reference. There's so much information on grammar that I can't imagine needing another grammar reference until about half-way through the book.

Anyone interested in more Turkish materials might want to check türkce or Turkish under "English books" at the German Amazon.

edit: I added the FSI turkish link to the forum since there's some other good information from the other members..

Edited by Sunja on 19 May 2012 at 7:34pm

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