I keep being told by my ´Turkish´ friends that the pronunciation is similar to Spanish, so I´ve been trying to learn - but I get corrected by them so often that I beg to differ.  Is there any site that has an audio of the letters and the sounds? - obviously, I´m still not getting it.

You can have a simple idea about pronunciation by listenin music.

http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTopic_21

In my posts in this section, there are lyrics and web links that you can listen by internet. Maybe this may provide you to have an idea about pronunciation of Turkish.

thx

turkishcobra //

I can assure you, Turkish does not sound very much like Spanish. Listen to songs. I find that is a good way to get used to the sound of a language. Spanish is a more steccato language, whereas Turkish is harmonious.  In both languages the R is trilled, but not as much as in Spanish with the latters r and rr. There is no ll in Turkish. Most of all, it´s the rythm that is different.

There have been many Turkish songs translated here.

Here is one by Sertab Erener by the name Aşk   and here is a discussion  about the meaning of the song...

Here is Tarkan´s Verme  here is a page with a translation 

 No, I agree with Alameda, it is nothing like Spanish - I learnt Spanish many years ago and I tried to learn Turkish, but I must say Spanish is by far the easier..... (sorry Turks!)

yeah, you´re right, but it´s a relative thing.

Learning Spanish for an English should be easier than learning Turkish, because both of them are IE languages meaning there are many grammatical similarities  and many common words between them, that´s very normal.

But does it mean learning Spanish is easier than learning Turkish for someone who speaks different languages from English&Spanish? How ´bout newborns who do not speak any language?

There are scientific studies that Turkish children are the fastest at learning their language, so it should tell something I think.

Yeah, here´s the article that talks about the study showing Turkish children learning the language the fastest. (Wasn´t able to find the original webpage.) 

I´m not really surprised that it takes Turkish children such a short amount of time to speak their language correctly... but does it really take children of other languages that long to speak it correctly? 12 years for Arabic? Really? 

Spanish is a Latin language, a problem for English speakers with learning Spanish is the fact that everything has a gender and there are no definite rules as to what is what. 

There are also several forms for adressing others from a familiar to formal that is still used.  English is a Germanic language with no gender attributed to things and the familiar is not used any more, other than, perhaps, in poetry. I think English would be very difficult to learn as it has absorbed so many other languages, such as words from Greek and Latin.

Yes alameda,

Spanish is a Latin language and English is a Germanic one. But they are still member of the bigger IE family as well so they are still very similar in many ways. The word order is similar for example. They connect main and subclauses in similar ways and don´t forget English has many Latin words.

On the other hand as an example Turkish and Japanese word order can be very similar to each other. Also the use of suffixes that don´t affect the word stem is a feature in both languages.

E.g. The man who stands there is my teacher
Asoko ni tatta hito wa watashi no sensei desu:
That-place in standing man (nominative marker) me-of teacher is (the of is of course the genitive particle)
Now in Turkish
Orada duran adam (benim) Ögretmenimdir
That-place-in standing man (me-of) teacher-my-is

Now because of such similarities I would expect that a Japanese person would find learning Turkish easier than learning Spanish.

Similarly I heard news that Turkish students studying in Japan advance faster than other foreign students in speaking Japanese and it is not a surprise for me.

 Yes you are right and I just meant I find Turkish difficult, but only really because I don´t have enough time to spend learning the basics.  I found French and Spanish easier to learn but I have no idea why!  Even though English is a Germanic language, I think German is also difficult and I don´t like the gutteral sounds, the latin based languages are far more romantic

My mother language is spanish, and I find turkish sounds very different.

It´s real that, in most of the cases, turkish is fonetical like spanish, but I find

differences in the pronunciation: for example if we talk about the vowels, it´s not the same "ben" than "tepe", or ´dağ´ than "Salih". I percieve that in general, turkish vowels sound "in the back" of the throat, like more gutural.

The "r" also sounds different depending the case. For example: the r in "var" sounds more like sh, but in "olurum" it´s a bit stronger. And if I listen "ne var", to my ear sounds like "ne war?".

There are more sound files here:

http://cali.arizona.edu/maxnet/tur/