Elementary Turkish (Dover Language Guides)

This book teaches the fundamentals of Turkish grammar to the beginner in a very logical order. Most of the sentences in the exercises are not what you'd be saying when you arrive in Turkey, but they are very well chosen to illustrate the grammatical points, and review the grammar of previous chapters. Answers to all exercises are in back. Since there is no audio, you should do a few chapters in a book with CD such as Teach Yourself Turkish to acquaint yourself with the sounds before beginning this book. As well as doing the Turkish-English and English-Turkish exercises, I translated my English translations of the Turkish-English exercises back into Turkish. This allowed me to learn thoroughly, and now, after six chapters, I find vowel harmonization comes naturally. I typed my answers, which required representing the special characters of the Turkish alphabet with my keyboard. On the Mac, ç is c with the option key pressed at the same time (probably the alt key on a Windows machine). ü is option key together with u followed immediately by u alone. ö is option key together with u followed immediately by o alone. For the i without a dot and the soft g I could find no exact representation, but for i without a dot I print î, option key together with i followed immediately by i alone, and for soft g I use ^g, i together with option followed by g alone. For learning vocabulary, I use mnemonic devices: I think of a memorable English sentence with combines the sounds of the Turkish word together with its meaning. For instance, the stem of the verb meaning find is bul. I think, "I found the bull in its pen." The stem of the verb meaning see is gör. I think "I saw Al Gore on television." The word meaning glass is bardak. I think, "I took the glass for the daiquiri from the bar." It is well worth spending time thinking up these sentences. There is no English-Turkish vocabulary, so a dictionary is useful (though you can find the words in the answer keys in the back). A few words are missing from the Turkish-English vocabulary, but missing words have occurred with every language text I have used. More importantly, a virtue of the book is that grammatical features that have not yet been taught do not appear in the exercises.

This little book is the best for learning Turkish grammar and language. I disagree with the negative reviewer. I'm American, but my husband is Turkish, and we go to Turkey fairly regularly. Of all my books, this is the best for learning the language. Without this book, I would not be able to hold a conversation with my in-laws who do not know any English. The grammar is not out of date, although not all of the tenses are used on a day-to-day basis by your average person. Those more complex cases are at the end of the book. If you are trying to learn Turkish, this is the best book because: 1-It is organized into short chapters that cover just the right of material for learning at once. 2-There are many, many sample exercises with answers in the back of the book. Other books do not offer this kind of practice. To learn, you need lots of practice. 3-The book incorporates enough useful vocabulary to go a long way without bombarding you with too much. Turkish grammar is very regular, so if you learn the basics you are set. A dictionary and this book are all you need to say what you want. If you are looking for some basic conversation, then this is not the book for you. (I recommend Starting Turkish (Starting series) [Paperback] B. Orhan Dogan )

Going to have to buy another copy as this one burned up in the LA fires.

My son & family are going to Ankara for a 3 year assignment. I wanted a more in depth language book than the Tape & CD variety available in the library. I wanted (prepare yourself) grammar and syntax and vocabulary. This book offers it. In my experience, there is no 'easy' way to learn a language. (I do listen to audio lessons when I'm driving, BTW). One still needs to Read, Recite, and Write. The audio texts are good for the pronunciation. But the book is good to see the actual word, (and in Turkish) understand how the verb stem is added to to indicate negation, question or statement, tense of course, and voice (I, you, we, you plural, they, he, she, & it). This is tough to pick up from an audio text. Some comments indicated the forms are out of date. Well, benim is still benim (I am), massa is still table, and yedi is still 7.

this book is helping me a lot, but its not the only turkish book i have. multiple learning texts are highly needed if one is to teach themselves a language. this book helps you with learning words, and translating from turkish to english and from english to turkish. it helps you to ask questions and answer them which is a major step to learning turkish. my husband is turkish but he is unable to help since he is living in Ankara. i am not ready to take on Turkey, but when i am, i will have this book to thank and many others i recieved from amazon.

It's a Turkish grammar, rather than a primer for a complete beginner. It was written for Princeton students who must be a very intelligent bunch. Sometimes the English is hard to follow and you have to be smart to understand it.. It's full of sentences like "the infinitives - common or light- may govern the objective definite suffix , or other appropriate suffixes, on preceding substantives, just as do finite verb forms." and "the common infinitive with the following combinations of two suffixes (1) the ablative suffix (2) the conditional suffix, means....." It may be a little out of date. It says the lira contains a hundred kurus. Maybe things move slowly in Princeton. I think it might be helpful for someone who had learned to talk Turkish in an ungrammatical way - maybe lives in Turkey- and wanted to become more correct. There are no tapes.

This book arrived earlier than expected, well packaged and in brand new condition. I highly recommend this seller if you wish to buy used books. I am very satisfied with my purchase and will definitely buy from Half Price Books again!

I have been through 25 Pimsleur lessons and spent many hours reviewing them again and again to brush up. But learning by ear isn't everything, and certainly doesn't make the student flexibile or creative in conversation: you either remember the phrase you learned by rote, or you don't. With this extraordinary book, the words are arranged as a student will remember them, and grammar explanations are always clear. After two or three hours with this Thomas book I find myself thinking for the first time that the language is beginning to take some kind of shape for me, an amorphous shape as yet but a shape nonetheless.

J en ai testé des livres et celui ci et le plus simple pour apprendre approfondir la grammaire turque. Il est un peu oldschool mais il n y a pas de jargon.

Easy to understand, all lessons are well explained and most important thing, go directly and logically to the point.

I bought this book after a recommendation - it's a useful addition to a whole range of other Turkish grammar books which I have - I find that no one book does the trick but that it's useful to have several

This is a reprint of a book originally printed in 1967 and slightly corrected in 1986. This means that present Turkish may be different from the language you learn with this book. However, because it is old, it has the advantages of the old-school books: efficiency. Apart from the introduction, where you are asked to learn a lot of words, the lessons are short and focused on one main topic. Each lesson is followed by so many sentences that you are asked to translate in one language or in the other, which prevents you from forgetting words and rules. This is not a book to learn how to ask people how they are, true, so it misses the freshness of a conversation, but it is of paramount helpfulness in learning this language, which is difficult for speakers of Western European languages since its grammar and vocabulary are completely different.

Muy completo, si lo combinas con un diccionario y unos audios, estaras mucho mas cerca de hablar turco de lo que crees. Y con este libro completas tu colección.