Elementary Turkish (Paperback)

by Lewis V. Thomas (Author), Norman Itzkowitz (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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.


Language Notes
Text: English, Turkish

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications (April 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486250644
• ISBN-13: 978-0486250649
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #391,087 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My First Turkish Text, And Still The Best Available, November 19, 2001

By	Ryan - See all my reviews

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.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A True Classic! -- does a very good job of teaching Turkish, June 10, 2000

By	Brian W. Capeloto MD (Anaheim, California, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This was my first text book in Turkish (some 28 years ago). Despite many new and innovative techiniques in language teaching and acquisition, this little charmer is still one of my favorites.

If one takes one's time to work through the exercises step-by-step -- the result will be an excellent basic command of Turkish sentence structure and verb system. Professor Thomas has a very systematic style which I appreciate as a student (especially when learning by oneself)

Alas, no one has taken the opportunity to make recordings of the examples or exercises. This would make a great package -- Hint, hint if the publisher is reading.

Anyway, affordably priced and fairly complete in itself (except for the lack of audio), you can't lose if you want to learn Turkish!

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars out dated, November 18, 2003

By	Tyrone (Istanbul Turkey) - See all my reviews

I've lived in Turkey for two years now and have a collection of books on Turkish. This one I would rate at the bottom of the list due to several things. 1) The Turkish it teaches is out of date, most Turks who I show this to (including my teacher) agree on this and find many things about the book laughable. This shows itself in both the vocab and in the conjugations (the future negative is condugated as "-miyecek" for example). 2) The descriptions are incredibly obtuse and technical and I was only able to understand them based on a few months of private lessons about the same concepts. If I had tried to learn on my own from this book I can't imagine how long it would take. The only positive thing I can state about it is there are a lot of exercises at the end of each chapter, something missing in every other book I've found... but even the answer keys to these exercises are sometimes wrong, use outdated words and forms, and ask you about concepts not yet taught. Perhaps for linguists this might be useful but as a begining and intermediate student I have found it incredibly frustrating. Many other books such as Teach Yourself Turkish are much easier to understand and explain the concepts so much simpler.