Hi all,
How long have you been learning your Turkish for and where are you as regards your confidence on conversational Turkish using every day to day conversations and situations. I am still very slow at putting together sentances I have learnt many words and sayings my problem lies on actually putting together a good quite basic conversational Turkish I would put the length of time learning at only three to four months I would like to be more further ahead of myself. Could you tell me members what conversational Turkish you have learnt and how long you been learning for.

I am at a similar stage and finding the construction of sentances difficult. It is OK when you learn a phrase and can repeat that!!

My biggest problem is time factor - I dont have enough time to spend on learning and when you are teaching yourself often motivation (and one too many glasses of wine!) get in the way. Not being able to hear the language is a problem to - so I bought some headphones (still to be used for listening to Turkish )

The use of slang in some translations also throws me - I am then even more confused :-S

I remember a thread on here to do with ways of learning - if anyone can remember it post it here please

Ho hum - lets press on!

I just had two lessons, so my Turkish is far below zero! I just know the usual stuff like 'nasilsin, iyiyim, tesekkuler, etc'. Besides that only a few words and the rows of ben-sen-o-biz-siz-onlar / -im/sin/-/iz/siniz/lar-ler etc. When looking at the last lesson I think I need a lot of time before I know and understand the language at basic level. I find Turkish difficult, because of the suffixes and vocalharmony with the changes. Even more difficult than Japanese (I learned a bit).

I also cannot yet put sentences together and am learning slowly the whole teaching yourself, motivation, and wine thing has made it difficult, but what I have noticed is even when I don't think I'm learning I really am, I try to translate sentences I see from other people on my own then I realize I figured out a sentence. Even though I still cannot put one together by myself I realized that I can understand bits and pieces of what my boyfriend is saying to other people. It always suprises me that I caught something. Its been a couple months for me and I have a lonnnng way to go obviously, but it will come if we just keep trying!

That I recognize! When I see a sentence I try to figure out what the verb is and then - with a dictionary of course - I try to translate so I can understand it. Sometimes it works... (not too often )

I just started too.. I know basics and conversation starters like Selam!! Ne yapıyorsun? Ne var ne yok? or things like asking age, time, where you live, what you do etc., but then when the person responds in a torrent of Turkish, I get so confused that I feel like I know nothing at all. It's worse with speaking because the online tools I use focus on written, rather than conversational Turkish.

I agree that the dictionary is very useful when chatting online, but I think I've been using it as a crutch instead of learning some of the words for myself, so I try to use it less now. I have nightmares of myself in the middle of a conversation whipping out my dictionary every time I want to respond to the person I'm speaking with - definitely not cool. My last attempt at conversing in Turkish left me so discouraged that I think maybe I'll try to find a pre-schooler to chat with next time instead .

I agree with everyone's comments. Ive got quite a good vocabulary base now and Im gradually coming to understand more written Turkish but the moment I am faced with actually speaking to a native Turkish speaker I just seem to freeze once I get beyond the nasilsin, iyiyim stage. The trouble is that everyone I know in Turkey speaks such good English - although they are helpful and appreciative of anything I do manage to say - it makes me lazy. I think I need to spend a few months in a remote village in the mountains surrounded by non-English speakers!!

merhaba!
I've been learning Turkce for a year....I take private lessons once a week...it is little as this is not an easy language
it is very important to try to speak and practice whay you have learnt; if there is not a Turkish speaker around, listen to music, turn the TV on a Turkish channel or simply take a liile of your time and make a grammer exercise.
the summer holliday spent in Turkiye helped me a lot, but I think I could not have managed without the courses I took and I'm still taking as this language is a challenge in itself!

for all those striving to learn Turkce, GOOD LUCK!