Reviews (32)

Turkish -- not easy but enjoyable
I suppose there is not much in particular in my personal background that might qualify me to evaluate language-learning texts like this one, but I have to say that I am entirely satisfied (perhaps even delighted) with the way this book is organized and with the brisk, lively style the authors, both apparently accomplished linguists, use in presenting the material. In each unit (there are 16 units)they give an interesting dialogue, a section on grammar and usage, lots of well-constructed exercises, and a final short dialogue. I must confess that my initial interest in learning Turkish was born of selfish motives: the grad school I'll be attending in the fall requires knowledge of a non-Indo-European language, so I considered a whole bunch of(to me)unknown tongues and happily zeroed in, considering that the civilization of which it is a part is so much more interesting than the others, on Turkish. Despite my less-than-noble original motivation, I have, by using this fine book, come to appreciate the great beauty of the language, really quite extraordinary in its morphology and syntax as well as in its phonetics and phonology. If this book leaves anything at all to be desired, it might be that is does not overwhelm the student with examples, and I personally love being overwhelmed with examples. Don't get me wrong: Teach Yourself Turkish gives plenty of examples, a wealth of them. But I would like having still more. I guess that's a question of what they are now calling my own "learning style." This book can be used with profit by anyone seriously interested in language study. Highly recommended.

The best beginners Turkish course on the market
I've been learning Turkish for six years now, and am reasonably fluent. In that time I've encountered many language courses and Teach Yourself Turkish is the best I've come across. It's also one of the best in the Teach Yourself series.
Excellent Service
The product arrived exactly the day it were estimated to arrive, the conditions were good and the quality of the book was in accordance with the reviews of former users of this product. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. Foreign Language Study    3. Language    4. Turkic Languages    5. Foreign Language Study / Turkic Languages   

Reviews (2)

Better than the book I used in college!
I just got this and the intermediate book that follows this one.they are both amazing. Perhaps the other reviewer had an earlier edition without an answer guide for mine has one.One word of warning, this book does not stand alone, but is better used with either classes or a self-teaching audio package or cd-rom.I really wish Berlitz comes out with an advanced book to finnish off the set.

Hard for the beginner
This book is a well done workbook except for the fact that there are no answers in the book.This book works only if used in a class situation where you can have an instructor to assist you. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. Foreign Language Study    3. Reference    4. Spanish    5. Spanish Language    6. Spanish: Adult Nonfiction    7. Language workbooks, practice books & exercises   

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. Grammar    3. Language    4. Language Arts & Disciplines    5. Turkic Languages    6. Turkish Language    7. English    8. Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure    9. Language Arts & Disciplines / Grammar    10. Reference | Language Learning & Instruction | Other    11. Turkish    12. Ural-Altaic & Hyperborean Languages   

Subjects:  1. Conversation and phrase books    2. English    3. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    4. Turkic Languages    5. Turkish language    6. Foreign Language Study / Turkic Languages    7. Language self-study & phrasebooks    8. Turkish   

Reviews (1)

Useful, but wildly overpriced
This is a good source for readers to get a feel for the Turkic language family as a whole, as well as an introduction to the various languages that make it up.The depth of coverage varies from one language to another:Turkish and Uzbek are the most extensively described, while some of the others get more cursory treatment.All of the descriptions are written in accord with the approach propounded by the major editor of the book, Lars Johanson.His own analysis is not always accurate, however, as can be seen in some places in this book.
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Subjects:  1. Foreign Language Study    2. Language    3. Language Arts / Linguistics / Literacy    4. Linguistics    5. Reference    6. Turkic Languages    7. Turkish Language    8. Historical & comparative linguistics    9. Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics    10. Ural-Altaic & Hyperborean Languages   

Subjects:  1. Conversation and phrase books    2. Dictionaries - General    3. English    4. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    5. Foreign Language Study    6. Language    7. Turkic Languages    8. Turkish language    9. Foreign Language Study / Turkic Languages    10. Language self-study & phrasebooks   

Reviews (3)

good but need phonetic translarions
the book is great for people wjo can read Farsi but it would be better if it included Phoneyic translations. Also, for you children it would the pictures are a little absreacr. Photos would be better. The secrion on the body is hard for even an adult to figure out what they are trying to depict. The animal page is wonderful and with a lack of English-Harsi books available it is okay.

Farsi dictionary for beginners
This has colorful drawings and the translations are accurate,according to the student for whom I purchased this item.However, it is less suited for middle school (my class level) and more likely to be used for children younger than 12 because it doesn't have photos. It is a wonderful picture book for the beginning English native-Farsi speaker.

great, but. . .
This book is lovely, but the words are in english (english script) and urdu (urdu script) - so if you don't read the urdu script this book is of no use.It is for children, or beginners, and maybe the target audience children can read both scripts, or would start to do so early.Unfortunately I don't! It would have been nice if they had also added the words in the Hindi-devanagari script, since Hindi and Urdu are practically the same language, but use different scripts. . .If you can read the urdu - it's a lovely book. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Children's Books/Ages 9-12 Nonfiction    2. Children: Grades 3-4    3. Foreign Language Study - General    4. Juvenile Nonfiction    5. Reference - Dictionaries    6. Bilingual dictionaries    7. Juvenile Fiction / General    8. Picture dictionaries    9. Turkish   

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. Language    3. Language Arts & Disciplines    4. Linguistics    5. Slavic Languages - Czech    6. Foreign Language Study / Turkic Languages    7. Language & Linguistics   

Reviews (2)

Practical Small Book
I am currently learning Turkish, and I have bought various reading material. This book is very practical as it is essentially a travel dictionary with a helpful set of phrases and sentences suitable for people who travel to Turkey or other regions that speak Turkish.
Excellent Little Book
This is an excellent little book with a succinct and interesting summary of Turkish grammar (no exercises, just a complete review of the basics).It has an extremely useful bi-lingual dictionary of common everyday words and terms (some of which I found more easily here as opposed to in a larger Turkish dictionary).The last half of the book consists of a Turkish Phrasebook divided into topics of interest for quick reference, such as Professions, Family Matters, Directions, Sightseeing, Weather, etc. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Conversation and phrase books    2. Dictionaries    3. Dictionaries - General    4. English    5. English language    6. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    7. Polyglot Dictionaries    8. Polyglot Phrasebooks    9. Reference    10. Turkic Languages    11. Turkish    12. Turkish language    13. Bilingual dictionaries    14. Language self-study & phrasebooks   

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. Grammar    3. Tables    4. Turkic Languages    5. Turkish Language    6. Verb    7. Foreign Language Study / Turkic Languages    8. Grammar & vocabulary    9. Turkish   

Subjects:  1. Dictionaries    2. Dictionaries - General    3. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    4. Foreign Language Study    5. Polyglot Dictionaries    6. Russian    7. Slavic Languages    8. Turkic Languages    9. Bilingual dictionaries    10. English    11. Kirghiz    12. Slavic (Slavonic) languages   

Reviews (6)

Incorrect transliteration tables
This is an excellent book as an overview of the language. The problem is that the Latin transliterations for the Turkmen and Uzbek alphabets are entirely wrong from the third character to the end. I work in a library, and had consulted this book while cataloging some Uzbek and Kazakh books, when I noticed the error. This is not useful to librarians or anyone studying these languages. If there has been an errata published for the transliteration tables, it needs to be made readily available.

great although a little strange
This is a dictionary organized by English words, with for each word the equivalent in each of the 8 Turkic languages.It's not a complete dictionary because it only has about 2000 words, but that is plenty for many purposes.Then in the back, it has an alphabetical listing of the words for each language (e.g. a listing of all the Azerbaijani words in alphabetical order, a listing of all the Kirghiz words in alphabetical order etc.It is nicely laid out, well printed and easy to use.The entries have very little information and are really just a list of words without any examples or grammatical explanations. Thus it will be most useful for those who already know at least one of these languages or are studying one.If you are interested in Turkic languages, this is the easiest way I know of to see vocabulary comparisons between them quickly. So just browsing in this book is quite interesting.The similarities (and differences) between these languages are fascinating. And if you already know one of these languages and are traveling somewhere where a different one of these languages is used, this book is extremely helpful and is not too large to take along.For many (most?) of these languages, it's hard to find a good dictionary (for instance there is only one Uzbek-English dictionary that I know of and it has a lot of limitations), so this book is a good equivalent.I have the hardback edition and one caution is it uses the Cyrillic script for languages such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek etc (with a phonetic transcription so you dont have to actually know how to read the Cyrillic script), but now these languages are switching over to Latin script.So it would be nice to have the words written in the official Latin script for that language because there are minor variants from one to the other. However this should not pose too many problems because the scripts are all fairly phonetic.This book is recommended to anyone interested in Turkic languages.

Great for those interested in linguisitcs!
The first time I saw this book was in Turkey, where I saw an earlier edition published by the government.This edition is much more complete, and contains several previously omitted languages.The vocabulary includedis pretty mundane, but the book is nevertheless an indispensible tool forthose interested in Turkic linguistics.The format is especially friendlyin this manner, with rows and columns to enable quick comparisons. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. Foreign Language Study    3. Language    4. Polyglot Dictionaries    5. Turkic Languages    6. Dictionaries    7. Juvenile Nonfiction / Foreign Language Study    8. Ural-Altaic & Hyperborean Languages   

Subjects:  1. Dictionaries - General    2. Foreign Language Study    3. Language    4. Turkic Languages    5. Turkish Language    6. Unabridged Audio - Misc.Nonfiction    7. Foreign Language Study / Turkic Languages   

Reviews (2)

Small and suits my needs
Mine is the Turkish book, purchased in Istanbul in October 2002 in a Turkish bookshop.Bright yellow, an inch thick and only about 3 inches by 4 inches in size, it suits my needs! Could be a lot better - very out of date
This dictionary seems handy enough until you actually try to use it.Turkish is a constantly changing language and the creators of this dictionary don't seem to have a grasp of true Turkish.After using the dictionary I am very often I corrected by native Turks who say "Where did that come from; that's totally wrong." Read more

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. Language    3. Polyglot Dictionaries    4. Turkic Languages    5. Dictionaries    6. Turkish   

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. Foreign Language Study    3. Language    4. Turkic Languages    5. Foreign Language Study / Turkic Languages    6. Grammar & vocabulary    7. Turkish   

Subjects:  1. Dictionaries - General    2. Foreign Language Study    3. Language    4. Reference    5. Turkish & Turkic Languages    6. Turkish Language    7. Bilingual dictionaries    8. English    9. Turkish   

Subjects:  1. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    2. General    3. Polyglot Dictionaries    4. Reference    5. Turkic Languages    6. Bilingual dictionaries    7. English    8. Turkish   

Reviews (4)

Very Professional
A VERY complex and thorough vocabulary and grammar book for the person seriously interested in studying Tajiki, but I do have one gripe; the glossary is only Tajiki-English, not English-Tajiki, so it is impossible to deviate from the lessons and frame your own thoughts! Plan on buying a separate dictionary.

Here we go--finally a good textbook for a Central Asian language that's in print
This book has its weak points--the exercises could be more robust, and the vocab lists sprawl--but all in all, this is a great way to learn an important Central Asian language. You might want to pair this one with Thackston's introduction to Persian, since the languages are mutually intelligible and it wouldn't hurt to pick up the Arabic script while you're at it.

Excellent
I only want, as another reader of this book, to echo the comments of the reader below:This is an excellent book for learning Tajik(i).Considering the general inavailability and/or poor quality of books to learn the languages of Central Asia, the authors and publishers of this one are to be congratulated for having produced this fine introduction.Read more

Subjects:  1. Arabic    2. English    3. Foreign Language - Dictionaries / Phrase Books    4. Foreign Language Study    5. Language    6. Miscellaneous    7. Russian    8. Tajik language    9. Textbooks for foreign speakers    10. Foreign Language Study / Arabic    11. Indic, East Indo-European & Dravidian Languages    12. Language self-study & phrasebooks    13. Turkic languages   

Subjects:  1. Aspect    2. Language    3. Language Arts & Disciplines    4. Language Arts / Linguistics / Literacy    5. Linguistics    6. Modality    7. Tense    8. Turkic Languages    9. Turkish language    10. Foreign Language Study-Turkic Languages    11. Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics    12. Language acquisition    13. Turkish    14. Turkish language--Tense   

Reviews (3)

A scholarly approach to a highly politicized issue
Turkish Language Reform, from its beginnings in the thirties to this day, has been a highly politicized issue in Turkey. Professor Lewis, a lover of "Beautiful Turkish", gives an excellent account of the historical development of this language engineering while successfully keeping his views out of the realm of language politics of Turkey. Any criticisms he has to make about the Turkish Language Association (Turk Dil Kurumu) come subtly and delicately through the carefully selected quotations from others. excellent although more interesting if you know some Turkish
The changes in the Turkish language over the past century are fascinating, and this book does a great job of explaining some of the political and social background.The author is an expert and extremely knowledgeable on this topic.To me the most telling summary was seeing a paragraph of one of Ataturk's most famous speeches presented in the original, then in a retranslation done later, then a re-retranslation done yet later! The first retranslation was necessary because the original could hardly be understood any more, with all the Arabic-derived words etc.The second retranslation was necessary because even the first retranslation could hardly be understood today!This book will be mostly interesting to those who know at least some Turkish already (and the more the better) or to those interested in linguistic change and social engineering. As the other reviews mention, the changes in Turkish are the result of deliberate re-engineering of the language, not of the more usual processes of linguistic evolution.Imagine taking English and trying to get rid of all the words derived from Latin or French and use only Anglo-Saxon words or words newly derived from other Germanic languages, and you will get a partial picture of what happened with Turkish. The author's views are probably summed up by the subtitle: a catastrophic success.The language reform was effective and some of it was valuable but it may have gone too far in destroying some useful distinctions and making Turkish a somewhat less effective and graceful means of expression.

a superb review of Turkish language
Prof. Lewis' book gives the full account of the reengeneering of today's Turkish which was essentially for political reasons. The author, atrue erudite and scholar, in about 200 pages pens the process of the death ofthe ottoman Turkish and the birth of modern Turkish with sometimes bizarreand tragi-comic results. The book must certainly appeal to all Turkishintellectuals irrespective of their ideological position. But it is equallyappealing to linguists and orientalists. I cannot praise this book highenough and recommend it strongly. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Language    2. Language Arts & Disciplines    3. Language Arts / Linguistics / Literacy    4. Linguistics    5. Turkish Language    6. Historical & comparative linguistics    7. Islamic studies    8. Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics    9. Linguistics | Sociolinguistics & Anthropological Linguistics    10. Nationalism    11. Turkey    12. Turkish    13. World history: from c 1900 -