Customer Reviews

Turkish, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Turkish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Turkish has been a pretty glaring hole in the Pimsleur catalog for some time now. It always seemed a bit strange that a company that takes the trouble to make programs for Irish, Ojibwe and Lithuanian would overlook a language with over 60 million speakers in such an important part of the world. Further, Turkey does everything it can to reach out to the West, economically, culturally and politically.

But after studying Turkish on my own for a while, I came to see why it may have gotten pushed to the back-burner. It is not a terribly difficult language to learn, but it is quite different in its structure to languages that have previously been produced by Pimsleur. Like Hungarian and Finnish - other popular languages that don't have Pimsleur courses - Turkish is an agglutanized language, which simply means that sentence structures are formed in large part by building on the base word. For example, they don't use prepositions as we do in English, they merely add a suffix on the word. "Sut" means "milk", "sutlu" means "with milk." School is "okul" - from school is "okuldan." And so forth.

While this concept alone doesn't make Turkish improbable for the Pimsleur format, bear in mind that words can become quite complicated when you begin adding attachments for possessive cases, plurals, location, tense, etc. It is not uncommon for words to eventually grow into the size of small sentences. And note negation; "I understand" is "biliyorum" but "I don't understand" is "bilMIyorum." So proper listening requires you to catch agglutinzed portions of the word in the middle of the sentence, otherwise the meaning is completely the opposite of what is understood.

Ok, with that out of the way it must be said that Pimsleur did a superb job of comporting Turkish into the script format that has remained pretty consistent through the various languages. Unlike Spanish or Italian, the pace is a little slower to make sure you "get" what is being accomplished as the vocabulary is built up and key concepts are explained. But the pace does keep up, which I found to be very satisfying. One of the great assets of Pimsleur (as opposed to say, the "Rocket" audio programs) is the lack of pointless chit-chat in English, and the steady pace to keep you focused on the target language. The Turkish script not only navigated the tricky points of Turkish quite well, but also happened to give among the most clear and concise introductions into the points of grammar as they came.

Again the voices are good, the speech is clear, and the vocabulary is useful. This one is a winner. Turkish is a great language, and very easy to speak with regards to pronounciation (say, compared to Arabic, Chinese or Russian). A month invested in this program would be all you would need to have a fantastic time in Turkey. Though I have not yet visited, my Turkish friends say if you know a little of the language, the hospitality is overwhelming and you will never be lacking for an invitation for dinner. I imagine with this program under your belt you'd eat like a king in Turkey!

Pimsleur's new Turkish program is very good. However, it comes in three sizes. 1) a basic program of 10 CD's. 2) a conversational program of 16 CD's. 3) A full program of 30 CDs.

Each program, however, repeats the revious program. So, If you bought Conversational Turkish, you have a 10 CD repeat of Basic before you get to six CD's of new material. If you buy the full Turkish program, you get 16 CD's of repeat and 14 new ones.

I found Basic and Conversational to have a good foundation of the basic language necessities to get by in Turkey.

As for the method; I found it very good. You practice a new lesson for a half hour every day. You can review, if you need to or wish, but only one new lesson a day.

Having worked at Turkish for several years, I have tried several programs. Pimsleur is quick, efficient and natural. A good program for the beginning student.

However, if you are seriously interested in Turkish, buy the 30 disc program, "Pimsleur's Turkish." You save money in the long run and, really, the Basic and Conversational courses don't quite give you enough.

So, for a Turkish learning program, I would give the lessons 5 stars, but, since this (Basic) and the following program (Conversational) are not quite enough, 4 stars.

As a footnote, if you are a person with a busy schedule, I believe Pimsleur is the method for you.

I really like the Pimsleur CDs, but do NOT buy both the Basic AND Conversational, as Amazon suggests. Basic consists of 5 CDs, and Conversational has the same 5, plus three additional. My recommendation is that you just buy the conversational and call it a day. My only other complaint is that I wish there were more than just the 8 CDs. To get a decent amount of Turkish, it looks like you need to spend >$200 for the full set. There needs to be more intermediately priced options.

I learned some Turkish a number of years ago but then had to do other things and didn't carry on. I recently started to study it again and bought the comprehensive course as soon as it came out to 'kick-start' my studies. I can only say that if it had been out when I learned the first time things would have been much easier and I wouldn't have had to relearn mispronunciations.

I like Pimsleur courses as a method for language learning. I don't know of any books that teach in such a way that one can easily use conversational phrases in a natural way. Maybe one or two obvious words in this course have too many repetitions and could usefully have been interspersed with others; we all know what 'dollar' means for example, but that's just a small point in a course that is excellent.

One piece of advice which I found, but isn't stressed enough in my opinion, is that although the lessons are 30 minutes each, it is best to allow more time to enable frequent use of the pause button. I don't think the gaps are long enough, but that is good: there's no point in paying for empty spaces in the CD. One learns best when given enough time to think of the correct answer, even if it takes a while at first, rather than having the recording play the answer while one is still working it out.

Pimsleur bring out the three levels, Basic, Conversational and Comprehensive so that one can choose between them. The two shorter courses are advertised as being part of the longer one. I think we should all email Amazon and ask them to stop advertising them as though they are three separate products.

Now, how do we persuade Simon & Schuster to bring out levels II and III??

I've never been a fan of learning languages by book or tape but recently starting using podcasts to learn languages (for free) and see that repetition and speaking out loud can be helpful in learning new sounds and getting used to hearing your voice speak another language. This system is very different and at first I wasn't too sure about it. After listening to the first few CDs I get the benefits and understand how helpful it is - Turkish is a rather difficult language to learn and each syllable is so important. This system actually teaches you the syllables backwards...they tell you the word and then they break it down into syllables starting from the end to build the word - genius! I makes you pay attention to each sound and learn to say each sound - which is vital to learning a new language, especially where a slight change in sound can be a completely different word! The narrator's voice is pleasant and the sound quality is superb. I have this on my iPod and listen as much as I can - the key is that you MUST be somewhere where you can repeat the words out loud...this is the only way to learn. IMO you have to get used to your mouth forming different sounds and how it sounds with your voice - this helps to build confidence to speak to another in this new language. The price is very good compared to other systems

I went through a lot of reviews on language instruction courses and the consenses seemed to be that Pimsluer was a easy and solid way to learn a language. I bought the Basic Turkish because I didn't have more than a month before my departure. I was so pleased with how much I learned even after the 1st lesson. It's very straight forward, focuses on actually learning how to communicate through conversations, and the method is effective (especially if you use it everyday).

I encourage using Pimsluer. The Basic was great, apparently the 16 lesson is the Basic plus 6 more lessons, and the package is worth getting if you're willing to put in the time.

As someone soon going to Turkey for the first time, I appreciated the chance to hear spoken Turkish and to get a sense of the sounds and rhythms of the language. However:

1. Learn Turkish in 30 minutes a day strikes me as misleading. I know several other languages, but Turkish is not at all easy. I had to repeat most of the lessons two or three times to get the words in my head.

2. I agree with others who say this course would be twice or three times as helpful with a written transcript of the lessons. (It would cost pennies--why not do it?) Not having a written record makes it much harder to memorize the sounds--an M" can sound like an N"--and to understand the logic of how longer words are built out of shorter ones.

3. The course is also intent on teaching relatively complex sentences early on (Would you also like to have some coffee? let's eat something later at the restaurant, etc). I think many people would find it much more helpful to learn the basics of "survival Turkish" in the first few hours of the course, including counting to 5, the words for toilet, telephone, water, ticket, help, etc. I'm currently at the end of lesson 8--it's taken me several weeks to get this far--and have only just learned the word for please! There's not much point in learning how to formulate complete sentences as a beginner, given that you wouldn't be able to understand a native speaker's answer anyway. Survival fundamentals first please, more complex sentences later.

I recently completed Turkish I and then went on a trip to Istanbul and later the Black Sea region around Trabzon. The Turkish I learned from the course was invaluable. The locals were surprised that I knew any Turkish and were impressed with my pronunciation. The CDs were instrumental in getting this fine tuned. It's just too bad there isn't a II and III. They would really come in handy on my next visit.

This is the first Pimsleur CDs that I try.

Before studying Turksih using the Pimsleur, I tired Rosetta stone for one or two week for learning it. However Rosetta stone was not as good as I had expected. It seems hard for me to squeeze time to sit in font of computer, and moreover,frankly speaking, it wasn't interesting to learn it using Rosetta sone, because it is hard to measure your progress. Well let me expalin it in this way. In Rosetta stone, at the very first part, you will learn how to say(and read) boy, girl, jump and so on in Turkish. But, this is not something you might use when you go to Turky. It is more probable to say, for example, "hi", " how are you", "Thank you". "No, I don't want it", and so on.

Disappointed by Rosetta stone, I stopped studying it for six months, and re-started it with Pimsleur. Now I'm just middle of Turkish I comprehensive CDs, and I'm happy with my progress I've achieved in such a short time. To me, it makes perfect sense to learn a lanuage,at least at the beginning, using only sound. And moreover, it is very convient to listen while commuting!

I'm very satisfied, but at the same time, I started to worry about the next course after Pimlseur I. I contact via Email to Simon&Schuster to ask whether they have a plan for publishing CD 2 and 3. Disappointingly, they replied me that "no" due to the lack of demand.

I thought, it would be helpful to leave my experience of Pimsleur in order to encourage someone hoping to learn Turkish to use Pimsleur, and eventually it would increase the demand and change the publisher's mind. Because I really don't know how to continue my Turkish learning after Level 1.

Anyway, in a nutshell, it is good program, and only regrettable thing is there is not level 2 and 3.

These 5 CDs included in the package give the learners a good start. The materials are pretty easy to follow. There are many repeats in the CDs to allow the learners to practice. The learning experience has been pretty good. However, I feel that the speakers in the CDs speak too fast. They should also repeat at least once and break down the sentences into the smaller parts for students to catch up. Another improvement needed is that the speaking material is not printed. The students can only rely on their memory and CDs but nothing to visualize. There are also no number counting in the CDs - maybe it is in the advanced ones. Anyway, the CDs give good tutorial to the first time Turkish learners.