Hi Everyone,

I don´t know if this is the right board to be posting this on and if not then I apoligze for this. I´m having one of them days where I would give my everything to be walking down a street in Karaman. Which has got me thinking on to bigger things that I need to achieve in my life..

Is there anyone in here who can give me tips on speaking turkish. I´m not on about the grammer but just the general speaking part. You see to obtain turkish citizenship you will be given a speaking test (naturally) and although I can understand what is being said to me when it comes to speaking I have no confidence whatsoever.

This got me thinking about youtube, I was even considering making a video of myself talking in turkish and thought youtube would be a good website to do this on because then people could comment on my prouncation. 

There are no turkish courses around my area even in my local college so I´ve only got the internet and my husband and even in front of my husband I tend to shy off when speaking to him in his own language.

Within a few years we will be moving over to Turkey but we´ll be living in karaman and as some of you (if not most of you) will know Karaman isn´t a tourist resort so I will need to able to speak turkish. People I speak to tell me that once I am living over there my turkish will improve but I want to be able to speak the language BEFORE we make the move, I just feel it will be so much easier to be able to speak the language before we arrive.

So if anyone could help me on ideas of ways to gain confidence when speaking turkish then I will be very much greatful to anyone. 

I know the ultimate solution for you, ozlemaydinli82. Make a child and make sure your husband speaks Turkish to him/her. You keep speaking your own language and just wait. As the child grows bilingual one day you notice you have learned together with him/her. No grammar, no dusty books, no sharpening of pencils. Just some physical pain, dirty work and sleepless nights but it´s worth it.

I found that being trown into the deep end of the pool was the best for me.  When I arrived in a small town in Turkey not many spoke English and generally they were very nice when they saw or I should say heard that I was trying very hard to speak Turkish and very helpfull, the main thing is to get over the uneasyness and shyness after that you will find that you will build confidance and hey you might have fun too, I know the woman at the pastry shop would laught when I would walk in every morning.   But Abla´s idea is also a good one

You can take some preparation courses online and with cd´s and such, watch Turkish movies and tv to get used to the sound. Ofcourse, practise speaking with any Turkish person you can find (even if it´s only by phone). You´ll only be able to really learn Turkish once you live there. Especially when you go to Karaman I have taken some language courses in Istanbul, and found out it helped me a lot in Istanbul itself, but once I´ve travelled to other places the accents were so different I had difficulty to understand people, or to be understood. Learning by living is the best option.

We have a child and my husband only speaks turkish to him and I do find that I do pick up more words as he is speaking. When he´s speaking to our child in english whatever command then I reply back to what he has said (in english). I just need more confidence in speaking this is my problem. 

I am going to spend a week with my in laws in May so I do think this will help me, I hope it will anyway. My husband isn´t coming with me and our son so I will have no choice but to be confident and speak. 

I´ve been learning turkish on my own (with the help of the internet), with the likes of grammer and also watching T.V. and I know many many words in turkish just don´t have the confidence, this is my only problem