Hello folks,
I am taking this next month to start learning Turkish. What are everyone’s favourite resources for Turkish, youtube videos, songs, books, apps?
What would you recommend I start with/ not start with?
Thank you so much!
Esther
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Hi Esther! Perhaps you can check with Linda @liaands here: Turkish Language Practice @ Venus Room
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Hey Esther, I first used Teach Yourself Turkish (now Complete Turkish) and I still think it’s a great resource. It does a great job of familiarizing you with the grammar with some good and helpful dialogues. I went on a trip to Turkey after having done 60% of that book, no other materials, pre-smart phones, and had a lot of meaningful interactions. I also got me and my wife out of some crazy transportation confusions in a hurry!! I would definitely recommend it. (And now Teach Yourself provides the audio for their books online for free via their Library app)
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Hi Esther,
I started Turkish with a beginners class at university many years ago and restarted this year. But as it wasn’t completely from zero (only almost from zero), it may not have been exactly the same experience. However, I actually liked Duolingo just to kind of get started somewhere. Sure, you’ll learn a lot of sentences like “the cat eats the turtle”, but the structure is not bad to learn your first words and get into the grammar as well. It actually teaches pretty much all the grammar using a lot of examples.
One of the best resources for me is this one though:
This is a podcast that you can listen to for free anywhere where you can find podcasts, I think. You just have to make sure you find the right episodes to start with as they are numbered by the date they came out not by their level. They teach through dialogues and they have 4 levels plus introduction lessons. Using their website costs 8 EUR a month and includes the transcriptions of their dialogues, more grammar explanations, and a few exercises. On their website, you can also see the order of the lessons (without paying).
There is another free resource to get started which is quite good. It’s simple grammar explanation and a kind of flashcard system.
https://elon.io/learn-turkish/lessons
I also used Assimil e-méthode for a while but became a bit disillusioned with their Turkish course. Today I decided to drop it as a resource, at least for now.
So, the resources I am currently still using are Turkish Tea Time and a textbook called Türkisch Lehrbuch für Anfänger und Fortgeschrittene A1 bis B1 by Margarete I. Ersen-Rasch. What I like about it is that it goes from A1 to B1 and there is also a second book from B1 to C1, so it’s quite complete. It’s meant for German speakers, so I don’t know if that would be interesting at all. I also still do Duolingo on the side.
Lately, I also enjoyed reading from a textbook meant for classes called Yedi İklim Türkçe. However, those books can only be used for reading, getting exercises and writing prompts, but they don’t include solutions. So you’d need someone for corrections. Maybe the Teach Yourself series may be better then, but I haven’t tried it. What @Alexander said sounds good though.
Once you have a bit of a basis there are also quite a few Turkish TV shows on Netflix that you can watch using
I watched Hakan: Muhafız (The Protector) and Atiye (The gift) so far.
Of course, you should also join the Turkish group @RonP mentioned to get some practice.
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Thank you so much for writing all this down Miri! I’ve started looking at the elon.io website, and it looks really helpful!
Thank you!
I used the TY Turkish in the past, @Alexander, and I really liked it, good for getting the basics to then build on.
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