Customer Reviews
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2008-10-23
Bought this so I could learn to speak with some of my friends from Turkey- wow, designed well I think, though some words aren't in the dictionary printed in the back (that's where the internet comes in handy) but that's thankfully not so common. I found it really easy to learn and speak using this- a great buy for the language dipper
seems okay but i lost interest 
2008-03-16
I lost interest halfway through this book. It's not bad, but I guess I was expecting starting with more conversational phrases instead of rules of language. There were a lot of exercises for which I would flip back to try to figure out what each word meant and occasionally get frustrated when a new word not previously defined was introduced. Sorry I didn't finish it. I will bring it on my trip though.
Learning Turkish 
2007-05-06
This standard for the English learning Turkish is everything I hoped it would be. I am working my way through the lessons with the help of my Turkish friends and hope to be able to speak and understand with some proficiency when I next visit Turkey.
A Grammar Manual 2007-01-28
This book is more or less for advanced students of language who have a better capacity to absorb grammar and language structure than the average tourist wishing to learn a few words in the local language. Some of it is outdated as language is constantly changing, but the vast majority of the information is useful for today.
Good middle difficulty starter book 2004-02-20
I use this book in combination with a simple tourist primer (for light studying while walking) and other more challenging books (that require more motivation). This book is excellent as a vehicle for steady (though not completely rigorous) acquisition of vocabulary and grammar.
out dated 
2003-11-18
Revised and edited by Norman Itzkowitz. Proven from years of success at Princeton University, this comprehensive grammar and exercise book yields maximum results in 23 lessons covering all essentials of grammar from alphabet to progressive verb forms. Enables students to quickly understand and use basic patterns of modern Turkish. Full glossary.
You have to be smart 2003-09-14
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.
Not very recommended . 2003-08-26
I have bought this book so my wife could learn Turkish.Turkish is my native language and from what I saw, there is no way to learn Turkish properly from this book. The example sentences make no sense. It looks like a computer translated the sentences to Turkish and nobody edited them. It definetly needs a native person's editing so the sentences make some sense.
Almost a 5 Star Book 2001-11-29
To prepare for going to Istanbul to attend the engagement party of my oldest son to the lovely Özlem, I thought it might be helpful if I could speak a word or two of Turkish.
There isn't a better book than this one on the market (actually, I don't think there are any other elementary Turkish language books ON the market). It is a great little book, with actual lessons laid out at the end of each chapter. You're given several sentences to translate from English to Turkish and vice-versa.
I would have given it five stars, but the downside is they don't tell you that you MUST have a Turkish dictionary at hand. I didn't realize this until I was in Istanbul trying to do my homework.
There's a short dictionary in the back of this book, but it is Turkish to English (which makes it hard to look up some of the words you're supposed to translate from English to Turkish - and some words just aren't there).
The CD tape I bought simply wasn't enough, so I added this book. (You absolutely need a CD, though, so you can understand the pronounciation -- extremely important in this language!
Highly recommended.
My First Turkish Text, And Still The Best Available 2001-11-19
Almost 10 years ago I went to Turkey for the first time as an exchange student with the Rotary Club. I was living with a Turkish family and I was determined to learn the language. One day I met another American woman in Turkey who spoke fluent Turkish. She sent me home with this book and a few words of advice. "Elementary Turkish" is truly a classic in the world of Turkish language acquisition. The book proved to be extremely helpful to me, especially as it gave me grammatical categories for all of the words and phrases that I was learning from the Turks around me. Lewis Thomas understands the language well, and his book explains it in very readable, but challenging lessons. After receiving the book, I spent about an hour with it every day for around 3 months. It was an integral part of my Turkish language acquisition.
Now as a fluent Turkish speaker, I use this book often to help train people who are going to Turkey, either long-term or short-term. In some of the vocabulary lists and colloquial expressions it is somewhat dated, but overall this short textbook is still the best. It is packed with helpful vocabulary and language lessons and exercises. It can be used either to study over a long period of time (as I did), or to peruse for vocabulary and basic grammar (as I have used it to train others).
If you have no exposure to spoken Turkish, buy this book along with one of the many cassette tape courses available. If you plan on learning Turkish in Turkey, then this book is all you need.
