I will start with the first question. What are the major difficulties you have (or had) in learning Turkish? If you succeded to overcome some of these problems, share how you did it and people having the same problems will be thankful. One more thing, which do you think are the most difficult and unintuitive aspects of Turkish?

the first trouble i faced was that i could hardly find books or cd for teacing turkish language even if i find it will not be very helpful then there is very small number of the translated urkish movies and songs.

The biggest difficulty is lack of online resources and the greatest challenge is in trying to find explanations that make all the root word suffixes and verb conjugations understandable ...

ahh the first difficulty is the word order in the sentence...pretty confusing
and of course, the lack of translated text....they can be very helpful because you can practise what you have learned.

It's a language almost totally devoid of cognates to my native English. Building a vocabulary is hard work in Turkish!

I've started taking lessons with friends met through a local university's "Language partner" program, and am hoping to complete a textbook within the next 9 months or so.

I have had also problems in finding turkish-english books.. but thanks god I found some stuff that helped me *a lot*. I wish I had found this website 8 or 9 months ago, when I started to study turkish.. this site is the best for beginners I think

Sertab, can you give the names of the books that helped you? This will definitely be helpful for people who need some extra resources.

the word order definitely. It's like you have to reprogam the linguistic part of your brain all over again. That's how it feels to me anyway. :-S

admin:

1. "teach yourself, beginner's turkish" by Asuman Çelen Pollard. + 2CD's

goal: everyday communication

content:
~ cover all the basics
~ go at a steady pace
~ build your confidence to speak



2. "teach yourself turkish". Asuman Çelen Pollard & David Pollard + 2CDs

goal: all-around confidence

content:
~ learn to speak, understand and write turkish
~ progress quickly beyond the basics
~ explore the language in depth



they r really useful.. these books together with daily visits to turkish forums, listening to turkish songs and so on r really good for a turkish learner. i would never in the life had thought i would b able to keep a conversation in turkish!

Thank you for sharing Sertab. Books are still one of the most effective ways for learning Turkish, especially if they are well-prepared. They come second after this site

this site is also very interesting:
www.turkishbooks.com
u can find many turkish books & other stuff there.

Selam Sertab!

Just wanted to let you know that I found "teach yourself, beginner's turkish" in my mailbox this morning!
I ordered it through Amazon.com, and it went really smooth, it took less than 10 days!
I can't wait to start!

Thanks again for the tip!

Elisa

sahane (:

hope it will help u as much as it helped me.. but remember that book is just for beginners.. the 2nd one i told u is the best one (:

btw did u already get the cd's or only the book?

I got both, the "audiopackage", book + cd's. It's no use without the cd's I guess, because the book refers to them in the exercices. It's also very usefull to practice pronounciation. You can put the cd on while doing the dishes for example, and repeat the dialogues

iyi günler

yazdıldığından çok farklı bir şekilde konuşulan tek dil: Türkçedir

I finished the second lesson of Teach Yourself Beginner's Turkish, and it goes quite well! But I must say that the reason why it goes so well, is because I discovered this website first, and studied some grammar, before I started the book. It has made it so much easier! I knew about vowel harmony, pronouns, etc... before I started the first lesson, and that really makes things much easier.

So, once again, thanks so much for this website!

Elisa

Elisa how is it going? is the book useful to u? hope so..

do u know about this site: www.tulumba.com? I wish I had found that site b4!!
I've just ordered this course:
http://www.tulumba.com/icy_itemdesc.asp?ic=zBK322220AE713
although the 1st book wont help me at all.. anyways does anybody here know about this course? is it good? hope so cos it's pahalı n wouldnt like to waste my money in vane..

Thanks for asking, it went great. Until I got the flu
Fortunately I'm not suffering very hard, but I have this splitting headache that won't go away. So studying or even just reading is painful.
Today was better though (touch wood

I'll check out the site and book you mentioned later.

Selam Sertab

I checked out the course you ordered, but I had to wonder: why do you order a beginner's course? Your knowledge of the language is good already, isn't it? And it's quite pahali indeed... Why don't you go on to a higher level?

Elisa

I hadnt seen ur old msg til now sorry! hope ur flu is over now
But y do u say the course I ordered is for beginners? no it's not! well yes, it is.. lol but only the 1st book.. it says *complete turkish course*.. so it must b a complete course, from beginners to an advance level.. actually I couldnt find anything better, n surely I wont buy any books for learning turkish in at least.. hmmm 2 or 3 years

go on with ur turkish canım (btw my turkish is not that good, believe me )

I think the most difficult (apart from the vocabulary...) is the wide use of participles, infinitives....etc, we are used to say conjunctions, relatives...etc but, in turkish, there is no "subordinates"....etc, we have to use "verbal" nouns, adjectives.... i'm not used to this form of syntax, and it makes me misunderstand spoken turkish.....it seems like latin

Hi to all!
I'm a new member in this site. Few weeks ago I decided to learn Turkish and I looked up all sites which teach you about this language. One of the best is this one, is a great way to get started! An ampliation of the grammar would be even greater.
I just wanted to say that I too bought that book of "Teach yourself Turkish". I just barely started working on in, but I think is a very good book. I don't have the CD's though, but it's still useful.
I don't know if I could recomend it because I haven't read anythng else abut this subject, but, if you want to learn Turkish in a dynamic way, I think that's the book. At least, is the author's philoosophy!
By the way, thanks a lot for this great site!
Eva

I had a funny way of learning word order which i'd like to share.

I have some Turkish friends who write, text and email me in English. They often write their English in the word order they would use in Turkish. Because I have so much contact with them, I have kind of got used to the word order they use when writing English and so when i construct a Turkish sentence, I have a pretty good idea of the order from their (mistaken) English word order. OK its not fool proof, but its one of those 'practical' methods that has worked for me.

Still, you will need to get some English speaking Turkish friends to use this method

Lyndie, I know that it can sound very funny when you translate a turkish sentence literally into english - as far as the word order goes . Can you give a couple of examples?

NYMpheva "teach yourself turkish" is the best book u could have chosen I think it's the best, really! and if u had got it together with the cd's it would b still better!

XEST I understand u perfectly, turkish is a mess with all those adjectival verbs and so on.. but now I understand everything pretty well with the help of that Turkish Grammar I bought. It's not very cheap but it's worth every € (:

Thank you Sertap, i will look for it

rica ederim! btw I'm sorry, I called u xesT instead of xesC

Hello everyone
I’ve just discovered this site......and that’s what I probably need
Actually i have been learning turkish almost for 2 years ! Doğu fakültesinde okuyorum
I have classes 4 times a week (!), just think about it, but i still don´t speak turkish !!!!!!
I speak english and german fluently, i don´t have any problems with it, i can easily watch TV and listen to the music! I learn spanish for a year, and it´s not a problem to speak it
But turkish! I don’t know what to do, i know grammar and enough words, but
Still i can’t talk to people!
Why?????? I’m absolutely broken and about to give it up........ Turkish is my main specialisation
atAt the University, I would never imagine, that learning turkish is such a difficult thing
What to do?

eslava, the only way to learn to speak a language is to speak it to a native speaker. there is really no other way. have you tried that? turkish is really not such a difficult languge. what is your native language?

Hi,
I am really struggling and I wonder if anyone can offer any help. I am living in Turkey with my husband (turkish) and I have been trying to teach myself Turkish since September. The only problem is I have dyslexia, and while I have learnt coping techniques in english I just can't seem to traslate them into Turkish with the sounds and things being soooo different.
My husband is getting really annoyed with me, I dont think he understands how difficult it is for me, I think he thinks I just dont care and am being lazy. He offers to buy me books but reading really does no good for me. I keep asking him if we can find a teacher for me but he says it's impossible and when he has attempted he just wants me to write things down and read them later on my own.
I am at a loss. I really want to learn. I hate going everywhere and relying on him to translate. Does anyone have any techniques for learning which I might be able to use?
Thankyou Sinead x

sinead,

I see that your situation is quite tough. I don't know much about dyslexia, but as far as I know it is difficulty to read. Then there is no point in insisting on buying books or trying to learn using books and such. You need to learn by practice, with the help of either your husband or a teacher - supplemented by visual and audio material. And if you are living in Turkey, finding a teacher for this is definitely not impossible. If you are not financially very restricted, you can contact some Turkish teaching courses and I am sure they will offer some useful help. Make what you need clear to your husband and he has to be understanding and supporting to make it easier for both of you.

Sinead,
I can imagine your hard situation.
Can't you buy audio books instead and listen to them?
I think that will help you. Hope you will find the solution soon.
Take care and good luck to you.

Merhaba! I am really thankful for this site.It's very useful.It is great.Guys,your suggestions are very helpful(for me).You're right regarding native speakers but unfortunately I don't have one.
You have to think in particular language to be fluent.My suggestion - read, read, and read even with mistakes.Read aloud and listen to yourself.That helps a lot.And one more thing - don't be shy - talk, even with mistakes.With your help I hope I can learn Turkish.Good luck to all of us.

The main difficulties??...there are SO MANY suffixes which one has to learn BY HEART ...plus the word order, it drives me crazy because it's not similar to my mother tongue spanish at all and to make it worse, I can't find anything to learn turkish written in spanish !!!!
But I won't give up, by the way , I know most women start learning turkish because of their turkish boyfriend or hubby but this is not my case, I just love foreign languages... but turkish men are quite well anyway! haha...aren't they??
Dilara

Oh yeah, definitely it is the suffixes that make Turkish so hard to learn, especially the partitive and verbal nouns suffixes...it takes me a lot of time deciphering them. I'm just hoping that things will get easier once i master them So far, after a month and a half since I started learning Turkish, they've been quite a mystery to me...

Lack of resources is another problem here, in Poland. All I have is Lewis's "Teach yourself Turkish" and a few websites, this one being especially helpful it the beginning. However, I'm planning to buy some books in simple Turksih when I'm in Turkey this summer

Good luck to all you fellow-learners!

Here are the websites that may help in uderstanding Turkish grammar:

http://members.aol.com/SciRealm/Turkish.html
this one is a Turkish grammar generator, pretty useful if u want to see how to spell parts of speech correctly with suffixes

http://www.turkishlanguage.co.uk
this one is very user-friendly and it does discuss partitives

http://www.cromwell-intl.com/turkish/verbs.html
not so much user-friendly but quite clear website dealing with suffixes

http://www.expage.com/turklearn
and a website with some links about learning Turkish

Now I just have to learn it... :-S

Hello Daydreamer,
Thank you for your information.I think it will be helpful.

www.tulumba.com.

Hello Ali,
Thank you very much.It'll help me a lot.

Hello Ali,
I ordered the books already.One of them is "Turkish for foreigners" vol.1.by Hekmet Sebuktekin.
Thank you again for your help.

Everyone learning Turkish... don't give up!!

I'm doing it at uni, joint honours in Turkish and French, and there have been times I've considered dropping Turkish and doing Portuguese (which would be cheating as I'm fluent in Portuguese)
But seriously, its a great language, I chose it for linguistic reasons as well as cultural interest etc and it's beautiful and intriguing.
The books I have are:
Teach Yourself Turkish (Pollard)
Langenscheidt English-Turkish Turkish-English dictionary
Turkish Grammar (Underhill)
They're all pretty good. Also if you have a uni nearby, see if you can check out their kutuphane, you may be surprised.
Also if you can go to Turkey, go! And speak as much as you can. Best go to non-tourist places where you'll be forced to speak Turkish. I haven't had chance to do that myself since starting the degree but I thats how I got to be fluent in Portguese, by going to Brazil and I was fluent in less than a year.

I know how hard it is, especially memorizing vocabulary, but it is worth it!

Turkish can be a hell's work to an Indo european speaker,coz in indo european languages,you dont have to order the words,but just the sentence...

But in Turkish,you both have to order the words and the whole sentence

Like:

I went there-it is so simple
I + past of go + location

ben oraya gittim-it is complex I think

I + ora(there - location) y(suffix to protect the hard-saying of two vowels coming together that is used for location indication) a(the addition of location) + git (go) tim (and the first person indicator of past tense)

Finding a language tutor isn't hard -- just contact your local university, and offer to befriend a Turkish student. The social high point of my week is my visit to the place where I need to wear clean socks. A charming young couple ply me with tea and turkish delight, then exchange help with English for help with Turkish.

I imagine, if you are in Turkey, being a native English speaker would make it easy to exchange tutorial services with college students.

not everywhere there are turkish teachers in universities...

Turkish STUDENTS should not be too hard to find. I mean students FROM Turkey, native speakers of that language, who can cheerfully help you with your pronunciation, if you are making a good-faith effort to teach yourself using other resources.

that's what I'm talking about: not everywhere there are Turks, especially student, willing to help. I study in Krakow, in Poland and this is one of three cities where there is turkish language tought. But unfortunately there are only ONE Turkish teacher who is Turk and NO turkish students at all.

i agree with Seticio that finding a native in poland is hard. however, u may get lucky if u try very hard. i found one who works for a local company in a city much smaller than krakow. now he's teaching me turkish in exchange for polish. so, perhaps it's an idea to ask friends if they've heard about a turkish person, not necessarily a student, living in ur area. then all u have to do is find a way to contact them. good luck to all

My only problem is my lack of vocabulary, I am picking it up very quickly, but I just need some words toi makes sentancces with......

Other than that, a piece of cake, i'll be fluent in a few months (well, maybe not fluent...lol)

Liz
xxxx

Hello All,

Just wanted to share my experience. I am just deputed to Turkey for a period of 2 yrs. Looking around, I realised there's no way I can manage without learning this language.

One of the best ways to learn is to enroll for classes. Works best. Quite expensive in Turkey though. In addition, the following helped:
- Turkishclass.com website
- participating in conversations at office & lunch
- reading newspaper (not for grammar but vocabulary and general terms like weather, food, shopping etc.)
- reading emails
- talking to taxi drivers
- talking to waiters at hotels

Ibrahim

Hey, just in case anyone's interested. Ani from Istanbul is offering private lessons. Check out the thread in this website.

For me, the hardest part of the language is the sentence structure and suffixes. Takes time for one to reprogramme the brain...

I think the main difficulty in learning for every language is the vocabulary..because once you know the grammar (and yes those can be hard) you wont have to study it again. But you're never finished study on the vocabulary of a language.

words order in sentences is still a big mystery for me, i wish there was a kind of formula that helps , something like subject+VERB +complement , in such away we can practise forming meaningful sebtences it would really be great

thanks for this best site ever

The best book I have ever found for serious study is called "Turkish Grammar" by G.L.Lewis , emeritus professor of Turkish at the University of Oxford, England.  The ISBN number is  0-19 815838-6   (Pbk).  Do not be terrified of this book, once you get used to it and the index it can help you greatly to solve almost any problem you have.  This book is far better that the junky book-in-progress that they gave us in the beginning Turkish class at a world famous university which I will not name. 

it is first time when i write here.i had problems too in learning turkish but you are lucky because some of you are from england.i am from romania but i have luck because i know english.not perfectly but enough to understand a lot.hardly i buy a little dictionary(turkish-romanian and romanian-turkish),because i didnt find in my city.i learnt grammar(not all).i am still learning.but i must learn words.and verbs.turkish it is very difficult from romanian.in our language doesnt exist present continous or present perfect or past perfect or other tenses.at us is present(like aorist tense),past simple and future.this site is very good for those who want to learn turkish.thank you.have a nice night or have a nice day.see you.bye

 i undestand you because i have the same problem.but i found something which helps me.ex:the man with the fishing rods in his hand will be at you friend´s 50th birthday party tomorrow night.when you translate in turkish the order is:hands his in which are fishing rods the with man tomorrow night friend your of 50th birthday party will be at.so the order into sentence is :1.the adjectival description of the subject 2.the subject 3.time clauses 4.the description of the adjective for the object 5.the object 6.the verb(at the right tense).i hope this will be helpful for you.see you.bye

  what did you want to mean?

I´m sure I will repeat a lot of what has already been said, but here is my personal list of challenges:

1 - Suffixes. There are suffixes in English so the concept is not totally foreign. Howeverthere is nothing to compare to Turkish suffixes.  Turkish sometimes feels like a "Linguistic Lego set" where you just keep adding things on at the end. There IS a clear logic to it all, but it is still daunting to try and master. As an example, someone once constructed this word (probably as a joke):
"Çekoslovakyalýlaþtýramadýklarýmýzdanmýþsýnýz"

Suffixes control most aspects of possession, tense, plurality and many other things. Sometimes suffixes eliminate the need for auxilary verbs... and sometimes they don´t (I don´t fully understand this yet).

2 - Vowel harmony. I´m not even going to try and explain this because I don´t yet fully understand it myself. But it is very important.

3 - No gender. There is limited gender in English so it is not that unusual. But it still throws me at times.

4 - Lack of cognates (words with a similar origin). When learning a western European language (eg. French, German,etc) you have the advantage of a shared historical origin for many words. Compare "Night" (English) - "Nuit" (French) and "Nacht" (German). Turkish has almost no shared words with English (the exceptions being modern loan words like tren - train and otobüs- bus). So you basically have to learn the entire vocabularly from nothing.

What´s worse is that it is so easy to automatically see cognates where they don´t exist. I still have trouble remembering that Gün means "day" and not "good", because when I see "Gün aydýn" I mentally associate it with "good day" and not "day-good".

the clock in turkish it is diffcult

In learning Turkish, what I do find difficult is indeed the way suffixes work and how they are added to the root of the word.

From French, Ensligh or Italian, we have to construct the sentences on the reverse order

However, the construction is fairly straightforward in Turksih, which I enjoy andit fits with my mind.

No problem with vowel harmony, it even comes naturally, probably the musical ears are helping.

In any case, I love learning Turkish, and will keep up!

it reminded me a funny translation from a film in turkish. it was

i=ben

love=seni

you=seviyorum

Asuman´s books appear very practical.  Make sure what you buy includes CD´s because Amazon sells them without (for something like $ten).  Without the CD´s, or maybe a native to substitute, their utility is marginal.

hi everyone!

i am also learning turkish. actually, i graduated from university - but i still don´t know it as much as i want to... i had different stages of difficulties before, as using grammar in practice. i got over that quickly and started to understand everything without any difficulty, but it was hard to start to speak. i was affraid of making mistakes while talking, then i realised i must. i started to speak, even to myself lol. music, movies, internet - it all helped a lot. finally, moving to turkey was a great plus, of course. i was working on some big projects as a translator, but still, my current problem is that i am mixing my mind when i am about to talk to someone i am not close to. i can´t get over that excitement i feel every time, and sometimes it sounds like i don´t even know the basic lol... i guess i have to overcome that somehow...