Customer Reviews

Hugo Language Course: Turkish In Three Months

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the best Turkish language book for beginners that I have found so far. As a translator and teacher of English living in Turkey I am struck by the enormous disparity in quality between books for foreigners who want to learn English and books in English for people who want to learn Turkish.

This is not surprising when you consider the enormous demand for books teaching English. Bengisu Rona's book has the advantage that it is written fairly recently (some other books on the market are pretty ancient). It is a logical presentation of the grammar of the language, but still lacks the lively and imaginative approach of most modern texts teaching the English language.

Turkish is very different from European languages, but once you get your head round the entirely different principles on which the language works, learning it is very satisfying.

So, until someone (maybe me!) gets round to writing a better book, I recommend "Turkish in 3 Months".

Don't take the title literally, though. You have no chance of cracking it in three months, unless you're a natural linguistic genius.

For a 3 month , independent trip through Turkey my wife decided to learn rudimentary conversational Turkish. She bought the very expensive...US/ FSI Turkish Basic Course (Level I ) with 12 tapes. She was very happy with the course. BUT..after borrowing the Hugo book from the local library , she wanted to get the Hugo Course with tapes. I was fortunate to find her a copy (with tapes) via a re-seller. The price was 10% of the FSI Course.
She also used the extremely inexpensive LV Thomas "Elementary Turkish" booklet.

Comparisons and Opinions?

The FSI course is massive, and the only way to describe it is to pretend that you are a 2 month old baby, who hears over and over again something that they very slowly begin to understand... and master rapidly.

The Hugo Course is comparable to a high school course. It comes fast... perhaps too fast, and overwhelms. However, when you 'crack the book' and actually "study"... it is all there. But you need to invest 2-3 hours per day to really master the material. My wife says that it is simpler , more logical, and ultimately easier than the FSI course. But she says the FSI course is very good, because it has the bulk to allow multiple repitions and incremental mastery. She also feels that the speakers on the FSI cassette are more varied and easier to understand than the Hugo course.

For 6 months, 3 hours/day she has been studying.That's her opinion.

For me? I didn't have the time to invest.I found the LV Thomas grammar book, a small Eng-TK/TK-Eng pocket dictionary , a Turkish co-worker, and a lot of listening to my wife's inane questions in Turkish, which she insisted I answer, helped me to achieve the comfort level that I wanted.

She loves the Hugo course, and that book is what she plans to take to Turkey. However...this is the 4th language she has learned. And she that she intends to continue learning it. And says that she would consider spending shelling out for the FSI Level II course when the time comes.

Update: a subsequent (2004) 3 month trip in far eastern Turkey demonstrated the utility of learning the language once you step off of the tourist track/guided tour world that is part of most (the few that there are) American visitors to TK) I would also recommend the comments of SK who mentioned that the FSL program is now available as open source/freeware)

As a reference book for grammar this is fine.Otherwise it's dull and offers little incentive to learn.I bought it because Rona wrote it, and her Get By in Turkish (BBC Books) is excellent.The problem with all these courses in Turkish is that the authors don't realise that the language is more 'alien'than the European languages one learns, and they all present far too much material far too soon.Start with the BBC book.It will at least give you enthusiasm, and some incentive to plough on through the rest of the dry stuff on the market.

I had been learning Turkish for about two or three months when I read this book and I went through it in 2 days (about 5 hrs). I think it's a good introductory text and with regards to grammar, remarkably complete. I've learned things from this book that books dedicated to Turkish grammar had forgotten to mention. There are 4 tapes and they start off slower than another language pack I have for Turkish. I wish there were more conversation dialogues. This is the thing that is missing. This pack along with the Colloquial Turkish (ArIn and Sinan BayraktoloGu) pack seem to cover everything I think I'll need. I'm quite happy with this book.

p.s. Don't let the negative reviews of people who don't seem to be able to put in the effort to learn something put you off! Turkish is no harder than any other language to learn.

The other reviews for this book are a bit too harsh in my opinion. I have used several Turkish langage texts and this is one of the best in terms of completeness. The first four chapters were the dullest for me, but after I had learned a little Turkish I found how valuable this book was. Actually I purchased the 1992 edition so I can't comment on the most recent edition. I sincerely hope that the publisher and author use this book as a basis for another book. If the first part of the book were more like Pollard and Pollard's Teach Yourself Turkish, then the book would probably be more accessible to those who only want to know a little Turkish, but there are too many books out there that barely cover Turkish grammar. Especially I like Rona's coverage of subject and object participles. Pictures with Turkish captions would be very useful - lots of them. An updated version should include Rona's coverage of the grammar (and more if possible) as well as lots of pictures and then a small section for those persons who just don't want to dig into the grammar. Overall though, I give this book an 'A.'

I am a Spaniard living in Turkey, and I went through many Turkish grammar books trying to learn the language. I was extremely happy to find Hugo's Turkish in Three Months... It really made it easier for me to understand the Turkish grammar and to find what ever I wanted to learn about it.

This is certainly a comprehensive survey of Turkish grammar, and as such it will serve the serious learner over a number of years. Rather than skipping through topics it covers Turkish grammar in a systematic manner.

It isn't a university text and it doesn't pretend to be, but it probably aims to high for the mass market as well, and I think that's where it falls down. I couldn't not recommend this book to a new learner of Turkish. It covers complex topics very early in the book, doesn't introduce vocab useful to the casual user of Turkish early enough, and buries itself in grammatical terms rather than plain English. There is little exposure to everyday conversational Turkish.

Having now been learning Turkish for six years, I still find this a useful reference, and I would happily recommend it to intermediate/advanced learners. However, I found it hellish difficult to actually learn from - Pollard's Teach Yourself Turkish is a much better book for the beginner. Anyone who actually can learn Turkish in three months from this is a better man than I, Gunga Din!

I think this book is a wonderful aid to anyone who is studying Turkish, and who wants a clear and succinct outline of the grammar of the language. The exercises in it with key are invaluable in helping a learner pull it all together, and would be perfect for someone using a more conversational approach but who wants to understand the structural framework of the language more efficiently.

I'm very glad I have this book (and a number of others in the series), because unfortunately Dorling Kindersley has allowed it to go out of print.

Which has led to an obscene situation I simply have to comment on here: As I write this, there are three marketplace sellers who have the book to sell. Two of them have it listed for $599.00 and one has it for $633.00!! Is this a joke?? Yes, it's out of print -- but does that entitle resellers to rob the public?

It's a soft-cover book of a mere 256 pages, and the copy I have has a price printed on the back cover of £5.95, which converts to just under $10 U.S. In whose universe is a 6,000 percent mark-up fair and reasonable? Who does business like that?

Although they say this is a three month course, I am cramming and trying to learn Turkish in 6 weeks before my trip to Turkey.

For background purposes, I purchased this book along with Teach Yourself Turkish. I speak English and Spanish fluently now and I have never tried to teach myself a new language before--especially not as an adult. I learned both English and Spanish growing up.

I found this book and the cassettes have helped me to learn Turkish faster than if I read through the book by itself. There are several reasons for this (1) time (2) uncertainty about pronunciation without a Turkish tutor (3) I learn more with both hearing and reading the words

I listen to the cassettes every day while I am stuck in 1 hour traffic on the way to work and 1 hour on the way home. The audio cassettes are in Turkish and in English. They say the word in Turkish twice, pause for 2 seconds to allow you time to repeat it, and then they say the English tranlastion and repeat the same word in Turkish a third time.

The cassette alone is also not enough. Some areas on the cassettes are only in Turkish to save time as there is so much to cover on 4 cassettes but the translation is in the book. So I listen during my ride and browse through the text while at work or at home.

I am on my second week and I am on my 2nd cassette (there are 4). I listened to the first cassette over and over again for a whole week and I think I have gotten a very good grasp in only 1 week.

What is missing are tests (they have short paragraph exercises for you to translate what you learned in previous chapters). I would have liked fill-in-the-blank lessons and finish these statement tests so that I could could benefit from the written method of learning.

If you buy the book from Amazon, you won't get the cassettes because I believe they stopped making them. I recommend you take the risk and buy it used. I bought mine used but it came brand new, still in an unopened package. They should keep selling the cassettes with the book.