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.