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Anybody Try Turkish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| surfingnirvana Newbie United States Joined 6625 days ago 37 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Armenian | Message 1 of 21 19 June 2006 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
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Well last summer me and my grandmother went to this Church charity sale and I saw this Turkish course. I dont know quite why but I bought it with its cassettes and I let it collect dust. However after flipping through it the last couple of weeks I find Turkish very interesting and worth going into.
Has any non speakers learnt this or any natives have opinions? More importantly are there any good resources? Ive noticed a considerable lack in materials :/ -Alejo 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6691 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 2 of 21 19 June 2006 at 9:00pm | IP Logged |
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I thought about Turkish but the agglutination put me off a little. Too many huge words can be made..
Anyway, there should be quite a few resources around. Teach Yourself has two books (Turkish and Beginner's Turkish) and I think the Colloquial series has a Turkish book too, but I'm not entirely sure. As far as I know, there is no Pimsleur course for Turkish but there are other courses out there. Rosetta Stone also has something for Turkish learners as far as I know. If you use phrasebooks in your learning, the Lonely Planet one is quite good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patlajan Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6950 days ago 59 posts - 65 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Turkish Studies: German, Mandarin, French | Message 3 of 21 19 June 2006 at 10:40pm | IP Logged |
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Evet, I enjoyed Turkish, although I rarely get to use it in the southwest U.S. There are a number of good books - one by Mardin and one by Lewis come to mind. Additionally you want to see if you can find the Redhouse dictionaies. There is a short pocket book size - but the two volume set is great. So many fun and obscure words - never mind that no Turk you meet will know them. Great fun and I think quite worthwhile project. Note: most Turks are very forgiving of errors and will try to help.
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| RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6633 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish | Message 4 of 21 20 June 2006 at 3:04am | IP Logged |
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I toyed with it for a while bit put it on hold for some time in the future. I got interested in it because of its superficial similarities with hungarian( vowel harmony, agglutination) and by the fact that you get to hear it quite often in Germany( second most common language here, 3 million+ speakers!)
But I have to say that it is very difficult, definetly a language you must study exclusively, with no other language at the same time. I think otherwise you get diminishing returns. The grammar is outlandish, to say it plainly. It is much more complex than e.g. hungarian grammar ( more tenses, more moods, more suffixes, more everything). It doesnt use relative clauses but rather a complicated participle constructian with declensions for person and case.Also natives speak very fast and for lack of long vowels it is difficult to distinguish words in the beginning. The bottom line: Very interesting, grammar that deserves its name and maybe equally difficult as japanese and korean save for the writing system. Very attractive for language geeks :) Jenö 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6878 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 5 of 21 20 June 2006 at 5:24am | IP Logged |
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I find Turkish fascinating linguistically and also have a thing about the region.
Consider the Assimil course - available in French and German. You also might want to look at FSI Basic. Edited by andee on 23 May 2009 at 3:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6569 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 21 20 June 2006 at 6:00am | IP Logged |
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RogueRook, do you know if Turks are able to get education in their own
language in Germany? I know they're expected to learn German, but according to this link: http://www.byegm.gov.tr/REFERENCES/EDUCATION-system.htm Turkey and Germany have an agreement to send Turkish-language educators to Germany. Interestingly, the deal goes both ways. 31 high schools in Turkey now provide education in German. Edited by Captain Haddock on 20 June 2006 at 8:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6633 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish | Message 7 of 21 20 June 2006 at 7:39am | IP Logged |
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Interesting link. Indeed I vaguely recall a project initiated in Bavaria aimed at providing children of turkish origin religion and ethics education. The turkish government is interested in controling the ideological orientation of turks living abroad so they became good Kemalists. ( as opposed to being attracted by islamists such as the "Milli Görüs" movement)
The language problem with migrants in Germany is quite severe. It is a messy subject. I only know there are no jobs in Germany for people who can't speak German. And I hope it stays that way. Jenö 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 8 of 21 20 June 2006 at 12:22pm | IP Logged |
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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. 21 persons have voted this message useful |
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