My relationship has come to an end. I went out to Istanbul to see my boyfriend. Before I went I learnt a bit of Turkish. He never encouraged me at all, in fact he didn't seem to want me to learn at all. I did it so that we could communicate better and also to show that I was willing. When I got out there one night i was talking to one of his friends in turkish, just jokingly he was saying how are you in turkish, and i answered him etc. He told me to go in the hotel then when we got in the hotel he was angry with me. Told me I looked stupid. When I asked why he said "you know just 5 words. It look stupid. You say just same 5 words to everybody"(actually its more like 25 words I now know) I said:"But I am proud of myself for learning" and he said "But you say, I'm learning turkish, not say the 5 words". He said in turkey it is very bad to say turkish to someone when you are not turkish or cannot speak it fluently. He has finished with me now cos we argued about this.

Is he right in saying this?

Sorry to hear that, especially because you actually want to learn it. I don't understand the reasons for his behaviour because I have experienced nothing but encouragement from anybody, even strangers. It seems that people respect you more as a foreigner when you try to speak to them in their own language and they are eager to chat with you in order to teach you more.

I felt so stupid after that I didn't dare use what I had learnt. He told me before I started learning that I would never be able to learn Turkish because the language was too difficult. He said ok, if you want to learn, you buy CDs - but you will give up after 3 days. That was why i was proud of myself because I knew enough to get me by.

Dear sevans, never mind that idiot. I am sorry for calling him idiot. However, you used to have an idiot boyfriend. Any "online virtual boyfriend" is far too better than having such a boyfriend because you never allow him (if he turns out to be idiot) to upset you. We have a saying: people aren't like melons that you can smell before making friends or being lovers with them.
Anyway, the Turkish language isn't that difficult to learn, if you keep studying on a regular basis. I bet, some day you will be able to speak Turkish better than he does. You have self-confidence in order to practise your very limited command of Turkish. I have seen some nonTurkish people on here who can write in Turkish much better than some native speakers of the language.