Colloquial Turkish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) 2nd Edition

People have complained about the layout of this book. Yes, it is difficult. Yes, the authors don't translate everything for you but they give you enough lead to figure things out. Having to figure out what things mean is part of learning a new language. I am living in Turkey right now and I have over a dozen books on the Turkish language.THIS ONE IS BY FAR THE BEST.If you need additional help figuring things out, I recommend the following two free websites to supplement your use of this book:Tureng.com (a powerful dictionary) and turkishlanguage.co.uk (a great grammar site).

Very clear, thorough and easy to use. It takes difficult concepts and breaks them down into learnable, logical progressions. The exercises are helpful and challenging

This course has good stuff with a baffling layout.pros-legible, everything is easy to read.-goes over all verb tenses-good binding-logical explanations of Turkish grammar-tons of examples-tons of contentcons-badly organized-inconsistent layout for examples and charts-some examples were translated, some weren't-I had to dig for some explanations of concepts that were hidden within long paragraphs.I can still recommend this course, but I would highly encourage also using other courses that have a more sensible organization.

Taking a trip to Turkey? Buy this book and you will learn Turkish. But be prepared to study of course :-)

A few days ago I posted a harsh review of this book. I decided that my criticisms were unfair in that my reactions had as much to do with my approach to learning a language as they did with the book itself.I've acquired a professional interest in learning Turkish. My ultimate goal is to be able to read Turkish journals and Turkish publications in history and social science. I wouldn't mind acquiring some spoken fluency as well, but it is not my first priority. I am clearly not the audience for whom "Colloquial Turkish" was published. (The title should have been my first clue.) Some of my frustration with the book arise from the fact that the authors didn't write the book that I wanted them to.That being said, even those who are most interested in conversational Turkish should be forewarned. Aarssen and Backus clearly believe in learning through immersion without much comment about how the language actually works. The book's central pedagogical device is the dialogue, one of which begins each lesson. These dialoques present situations -- meeting a friend on the street, introducing one's English family to one's Turkish friends, etc. The dialogues are followed by vocabulary lists. There is very limited discussion of the mechanics of the language. This makes for a slow start indeed. One can memorize vocabulary, but if you want to start putting together sentences and in other ways build your repertoire, you will find yourself frustrated. You'll want to start thinking in Turkish and trying out your own little expressions based on the content of the dialogue, but you won't have the tools.In other ways, the presentation appears to be needlessly obscure. The exercises that appear in each unit are pretty sparse, and the explanations are often cryptic. This problem is compounded by the fact that examples and explanations often use vocabulary that hasn't been introduced in the vocabulary lists, and they may use verb tenses that haven't been covered. This makes for tough sledding, though, again, I think the authors do this intentionally on the principle that one expands one's command of the language by confronting forms and vocabulary that one hasn't previously seen. My argument would be that learning is much faster and more effective if these new forms, etc., are accompanied by more explanation.I don't want to bash the book. I've been using it for several weeks now and I've made some headway. But I am basically self-teaching, and this is not the way I approach learning a language.In my conversations with a couple of people who teach Turkish and from what explorations I've been able to carry out, I would say that if your approach sounds like mine, you would be better off with "Elementary Turkish" by Kurtuluº Oztopçu. It's not cheap at $75.00 plus shipping, but you get a much more complete text plus two CDs to help with pronunciation. If you buy "Colloquial Turkish" with accompanying CDs, you'll pay about the same. Unfortunately, I think you may have to buy "Elementary Turkish" online directly from the author. I haven't seen it listed on Amazon.

very fast!!item as described 😁

There is a serious problem with the Kindle version of this book. On many occasions, the difference between dotted and undotted i, [I can't seem to upload a review with the correct letters either], g and yumasak g and even sometimes s with the cedilla is not clear. Those differences are vital in Turkish, especially for beginners (like me). My guess is that this is due to optical character reading problems.I suspect this will be cleared up in the future. Kindle is still a new technology, and in just about every other respect it's been wonderful.When it is cleared up, though, I hope re-downloads are free.Gerry Schulze

The book is full of mistakes and quite odd phrases. As a native speaker of Turkish (I teach Turkish, thus I have the book) I find the dialogues and passages artificial. Some idioms and phrases are used out of place and depending on the context the learner may choose to use them, they may result in embarrasment on the part of the speaker and/or hearer.In terms of the organization of a language teaching/learning book, like many other non-English teaching books, it does not follow the criteria for a good book; such as presenting the subject matter clearly and in an organized way so that it is not confusing for the learner. The exercises are usually controlled, which is not a very good thing.All in all, it fails in three important aspects: The correct use of the language and grammar, the authentic use of them, and the organization of the material.I hope there are better alternatives around. This certainly doesn't qualify as a good one.

The book is very useful.it helped me a lot

In den Rezensionen findet sich jene von Philip Keegan, welche wohl die fundierteste inhaltliche Kritik darstellt: sprachliche Fehler und dümmliche Dialoge.Mein wesentlicher Kritikpunkt ist die ungenügende (nicht mehr "mangelhaft"!) Orientierung im Buch. Das Inhaltsverzeichnis, das nicht die geringsten Informationen zu den Kapiteln liefert. Den Kapiteln vorgeschaltet (man muss also ins Buch reinblättern) sind Lernziele, die allerdings auch kaum aufklären, was anschließend dargestellt wird. Eine Sprache besteht - grob gesagt - aus Vokabeln und grammatischen Modulen. Die Vokabeln werden nach bestimmten Standards gegliedert - Reihenfolge im Text, alphabetisch, nach Wortfeldern (onomasiologisch). Da kann man schon Ansätze in dem Buch erkennen. Grammatische Module wären Tempora, Modi, Postpositionen, Kasussystem, Wortbildung, Syntax .... Man findet dazu weder im Inhaltsverzeichnis noch im Index etwas. Das Buch ist insofern ein unübersichtliches Chaos, das ich nur widerwillig zur Hand nehme. Und bevor ich mir in zwei oder drei Stunden eine Übersicht in Word zusammenschreibe, was in dem Buch alles zu finden ist, investiere ich die Zeit lieber zum Erarbeiten eines Moduls in einer ordentlichen Grammatik.Und man hätte es ja ahnen können. Der Klappentext schreibt u. a.: "Jargon-free grammar notes". - Wer in einem Sprachlehrbuch auf "jargon" verzichtet, stellt sich bewusst außerhalb des üblichen didaktischen Kontextes auf. Zum Begriff "jargon" cf. englische Wikipedia; es handelt sich um "Terminologie" und nicht um den ggf. leicht negativ konnotierten deutschen Begriff "Jargon": "Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity."

El mejor libro que he encontrado para aprender turco por mi cuenta

OK, I have started to learn Turkish through Duolingo so have a running start, but I find the books approach very easy and helpfull. I wish I could find the CD's though.

Very clear and easy to u crests d book. I recommend this book to anyone starting to learn turkish