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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5995 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 1 of 36 25 July 2008 at 4:08pm | IP Logged |
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Greetings all,
I am tossing up the idea of toying with Turkish. It doesn't seem to be the most popular of languages, but it has a rich and interesting history, I am interested in going to Istanbul and a number of other places, and I am meeting more and more Turks. In fact, I have made a friend of a Turk at my language school and we have agreed to exchange English/French/Turkish through webcam etc, as she is going back to Turkey tomorrow. Now, as I am currently studying French and living in Paris, I do not fear for my progress in the French language. But I have the itch to dabble in something else. I have taken a look at it, as far as I can see, aside from loan words, it bares no similarity to English, and French. For me, this is a positive. I want to try something new and exciting. It isn't going to be my priority, that is obviously French, but I do hope to make steady, if slow, progress. I had a look at the foreign language section in FNAC, the Turkish section is rather small. Pretty much just ASSIMIL, one course book and a couple of dictionaries. Is there more available? In either English or French? I did a quick google search, found a couple of sites that look good, in both English and French, so this is encouraging. The main purpose of creating this thread is to get some feed back, encouragement and ideas from those of you who have learned, are learning, or tried to learn Turkish. I would like to know your thoughts, the methods that you found most useful, links, resources etc. Write me back, Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6857 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 36 26 July 2008 at 12:07am | IP Logged |
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It's definitely a big project to undertake. You've got your upsides such as a Latin alphabet and relatively easy pronunciation (having studied French, you should do fine with the vowels). Then there's the grammar which is very different. Most of it is quite logical, but just takes some getting used to.
I'd say there are enough resources out there to give you a solid grounding. Aside from your typical learning materials, Turkey produces tons of movies and music. There is also a significant Turkish presence on the internet and there are plenty of Turks willing to practice with you. I haven't studied as hard as I should, but I don't think I'll ever abandon Turkish. It's just too damn cool. I've also become really interested in the other Turkic languages and hope to collect a few of them after I'm comfortable with my Turkish. I'd tell you to go for it. It really is a lot of fun. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5995 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 3 of 36 26 July 2008 at 6:45am | IP Logged |
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Frisco,
Thank you for your comments, it is good to read that it is a viable option. How long have you been studying? I think I will give it a go, I need some thing other than Romance languages to entertain me. Can you point me towards your prefered, free, internet resources? Does anyone else have an opinion? Hints, tips, warnings? Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6822 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 4 of 36 26 July 2008 at 1:14pm | IP Logged |
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dang...just made a nice post and then an error occured on the server...
...so gotta write it again... I'm happy to hear you want to learn Turkish. You will see that Turkish is a fairly easy language. Pronunciation is extremely easy and it's spelling is very logical (no exceptions). Its agglutinative nature and the fact that it is SVO could be a little hard to get used to, but that'll go away real quick. The grammar is extremely logical, with almost no irregularities! The only thing that might trouble you could be vocabulary, but still, there are so many loanwords from French (asansör, direktör, trajektör, otomobil, pantolon, kilot, etc.) Turkish will give you a huge advantage in learning Azerbaijani (which you could classify as a dialect, the only major (!) difference being pronunciation) and Turcoman (spoken by the Turkmen of northern Iraq). It'll also give you a very solid foundation in Turkic grammar in general, but the farther east you move (Kazakh, Uighur, Uzbek...Yakut being the eastern most Turkic language I know sounds very very strange to me) the "weirder" it gets Regards, Ilhan PS: I'd be more than happy to help you out if you need anything! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6651 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 5 of 36 26 July 2008 at 3:00pm | IP Logged |
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You can check out my one-week intensive study session where I crammed as much Turkish as I could. The thread is here: One Week Challenge - Turkish.
I like the language a lot and will return to it when time permits. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 6 of 36 26 July 2008 at 8:35pm | IP Logged |
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http://www.learningturkish.org/
http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Lang uages/Natural/Altaic/Turkic/ http://www.international.ucla.edu/turkishtutor/pages/home/bl ackborder-fs.html Turkish is hasn't moved from my to-do list but I haven't found the time to start it. I've run across the above links. Good luck. Hope you find some good books or web sites. The Teach Yourself series has some books on Turkish. The Jules Gilbert bookstore by St. Michel (spelling) fountain/RER station has a few books on Turkish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5995 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 7 of 36 27 July 2008 at 6:28am | IP Logged |
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Ilhan,
To save me the trouble of looking it up, can you explain SVO to me? *Edit: Never mind. Sorted it out myself.* I am not at the stage where I am interested in learning dialects of places I have no intention of going, but the fact that it is a different family is one of the major reasons I have for studying it. I am happy that there are infact loan words, even if they are french;), every little advantage helps. When I get a little bit further into the guts of the language I might just have a few questions for you. Apparition, You are insane, but in a good, admirable and inspiring way. I will be rereading your log as I progress. Jimbo, Cheers for the links, and I am going to go to Jules Gibert this week, and also Novagora, which is apparantly a good language learning bookshop somewhere in Paris. Keep it coming folks, perhaps if we have enough information, and enough positive statements in one place, we can create a revolutionary wave of turkish delight. Thom. Edited by ExtraLean on 27 July 2008 at 10:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6822 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 8 of 36 27 July 2008 at 1:47pm | IP Logged |
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I'd more than love it to help you ;)
Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful |
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