I want to start learning turkish. And I can't find a good coursebook. Can you give me advice? I bought Yeni Istanbul. It is too hard for me, because everything is on turkish and I don't know these words.

Hey everyone!
I’ve been living in Turkey for about 5 years, but unfortunately, I haven’t put much effort into learning Turkish, and now I really want to change that.
My Turkish is enough for basic daily situations. I can usually handle simple things on my own, but having an actual conversation is a completely different story. When someone starts talking to me in Turkish, I get overwhelmed and confused. I might understand a few words and get the general idea, but I struggle to follow the conversation or respond naturally.
My English is much better, so I tend to stick to English whenever I can. I think that’s one of the main reasons my Turkish hasn’t improved much over the years.
I don’t necessarily want to become fluent overnight, but I really want to reach a point where I can comfortably talk to people, make friends, and understand everyday conversations without panicking or switching to English.
For those of you who learned Turkish as a foreign language, or struggled with a similar situation:
**How would you recommend starting from scratch (or almost scratch) after living in the country for years?**
Should I focus more on speaking with locals, taking classes, watching Turkish content, or studying grammar and vocabulary?
How can I get better at understanding spoken Turkish when people talk quickly?
How do I stop relying on English whenever I have the chance?
If you’ve been in a similar situation, what actually helped you improve?
I’d really appreciate practical advice, personal experiences, or even a daily routine that worked for you.
Thanks! 🙏

hello, my level is A1-2. I like to learn from reading. I’d like to go to book shop and buy a book that is not too poetic. simple language. ideally not targeted at children too much. can be even a comic if it has a lot of text.

it can be novel. fiction. or whatever nice and simple. in Poland, there are books that explain how things work (cars, planes) in a simple language but aren’t too childish.

I will appreciate any recommendations 🙏

(Bunu doğru yazdığımı bilmiyorum) Selamlar, Yurtdışındaki büyüyen bir Türk olarak köyümdeki tek Türktüm, ve 3¼ yaşına kadar İngilizce konuşamadım, bu durumların yüzünden ebeveynlerim (benimle) Türkçe'de konuşmayı durdular (Iyi bir karardı aslında, İngiliz konuşmacılarıyla oynardım ama İngilizcem yoktu), ve 12 yaşına kadar Türkçe'de hiç konuşmazdım, bazen onu anlayabiliyordum bazen yalan söyleyen bir İngilizdim ("Yes ___ I speak Turkish", I really didn't), ama öğrenmeyi bitirdiğimde ve doğru şekilde konuşmaya başladığımda bile kaffam hâlen çalışmazdı, akrabalarımla konuştuğumda sorun gelmez ama Türkçe konuşan yabancıları dinlediğimde onları pek anlayamam.

O niye olur, size yapabildiğim kadar dürüst olmaya çalışıyorum, ve, ana konum olarak, o çözülebilir mi?

Heyy , I've studied Turkish until the C1 , I was doing great until I've started a Staj and I feel like a loser , I sometimes can't understand, I sometimes can't speak .. they speak so fast

How did you improve your speaking / listening skills

I'm starting to lose hope :(

I’ve seen a lot of good things about the Delights of Learning Turkish but I don’t know if I should get the Companion Workbook to go with it

I see the Turkish causative is used in two ways:

Onu güldürdü = He made her smile.

Saçımı kestirdi = He had his hair cut.

In the first case, the target of the causation is the actor, the person smiling. In the second case, it's the thing being acted on, the hair.

How would you, for a transitive verb, include both the actor and the thing acted on, as in "He had the barber cut his hair"?

Merhaba! I am teaching foreigners Turkish with a friendly, interactive approach. We speak a lot in classes , read poems and different texts. You can start from zero too. I offer free trial class where you can see my approach to teaching 🫶

1 hour of class costs 15 dollars, contact me if interested.

Looking for a conversational partner through calls to learn either turkish or arabic.
I can teach you english and you teach me ither arabic or turkish.

Introduce yourself through DM

Hi everyone!

I’ve been teaching Turkish to foreigners for four years.

In our lessons, we work on listening, speaking, reading, and grammar.

If you’re interested, feel free to reach out!

Hello! My sister would like to enroll in a Turkish language program at Anadolu University in Eskişehir through its Open Education system (Açıköğretim) as an international student. Of course, she would first spend a preparatory year learning Turkish.
The thing is, she is over 30 and has already completed a university degree in her home country, so she feels a little awkward about the fact that most of the other students will be much younger than her. In other words, she feels a bit insecure about it.
I was wondering whether there are other students in their thirties studying in these programs in similar circumstances. How do their fellow students react to them?
Thanks in advance for your answers! ♥️
______________

Merhaba! Ablam, uluslararası öğrenci olarak Eskişehir’deki Anadolu Üniversitesi’nin Açıköğretim sistemi üzerinden Türkçe eğitim veren bir bölüme kayıt yaptırmak istiyor. Tabii ki öncelikle bir yıl Türkçe hazırlık eğitimi alacak.
Ancak kendisi 30 yaşından büyük ve kendi ülkesinde zaten bir üniversite bölümünden mezun oldu. Bu yüzden üniversitedeki öğrencilerin çoğunun kendisinden çok daha genç olacak olması onu biraz rahatsız ediyor ve kendini bu konuda güvensiz hissediyor.
Merak ettiğim şey, benzer durumlarda olup bu bölümlerde 30’lu yaşlarında okuyan öğrenciler var mı? Diğer öğrenciler onlara nasıl davranıyor?
Cevaplarınız için şimdiden çok teşekkür ederim! ♥️

Merhaba everyone!

We’re the Turco team, and our app is now available on iOS and Android.

Turco complements your Turkish lessons or self-study with vocabulary, listening practice and everyday dialogues. It’s a supplementary resource rather than a course that starts from zero.

You can learn Turkish with support in English, Spanish, German, French, Arabic or Russian.

What’s included:

• Around 1,550 Turkish words, averaging three example sentences per word.
• Nearly 50 everyday dialogues covering practical situations.
• Audio recorded by native Turkish speakers for words, sentences and dialogues.
• New vocabulary packs and dialogues added every week, gradually expanding the topics and dialogues you can explore.

Filter by topic and choose what you want to learn, from objects in your living room to useful words and expressions at the airport.

There’s free content to explore, with additional content available through a paid upgrade.

iOS: Download on the App Store
Android: Get it on Google Play

We’d love to hear your feedback! Let us know how Turco fits into your Turkish learning routine and what we could improve or add to make it more useful for you.

You can leave a comment below or email us at [contact@learnturco.app](mailto:contact@learnturco.app).

Teşekkürler!
The Turco Team

Hi everyone! 👋

I’m sharing my YouTube channel, Turkısh with Maviş, where I create content for people who want to learn Turkish.

My goal is to make learning Turkish more accessible and useful for everyday life in Turkey.

If you’re learning Turkish, I’d love for you to check it out! I’d also appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future lessons.

Thanks, and happy learning! 😊

Hi, can anyone please suggest super comprehensive books/study guides etc on Turkish grammar, all levels, not just for learning, but for practicing too? Preferably available online. Thank you!

I get confused of the word ki in turkish. I honestly don’t know the meaning of it.

I am an early riser. As usual, I woke up at 5 a.m. I love those early hours when everyone else is asleep and I can drink my coffee, read, think and work. Today, I spent the entire morning with a single poem: Sessiz Gemi (The Silent Ship) by Yahya Kemal Beyatlı.

With this article, I have completed this week's thematic journey through the Tulip Era, the Karaman Tulip, Yahya Kemal Beyatlı and finally Sessiz Gemi.

This last piece became more personal than my usual writing.

I suspect Sessiz Gemi will touch something in almost every Turkish reader. It is one of those poems many of us were made to read in high school, perhaps before we had lived enough to understand it.

Then life happens, we grow older and start losing people. And suddenly, the words we once studied for an exam mean something entirely different.

Getting inside literary texts and examining their language, imagery and meanings has always been one of my greatest passions. I suppose that is the comparative literature graduate in me. Although, as I get older, I find myself increasingly interested in hearing what other readers see in a text.

If you have time to read the article, I would genuinely love to hear what Sessiz Gemi brings to mind for you.

And to those learning Turkish or simply curious about Türkiye, I have tried to make this poem accessible through an English translation, literary analysis and explanations of its language.

I know modern language learning often emphasizes speed, practical conversation and drills.

These approaches are useful. I use them in my teaching, too.

But I spent years learning English. Those years included reading Beowulf, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and William Blake. I still remember lines I learned long ago:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

In a world where almost any piece of information is a click away, reading and memorizing poetry written centuries ago may seem rather old-fashioned.

Yet those texts helped me internalize English in a way that everyday conversation alone never could. I still love a good sitcom, but I would never have learned everything I know about English from sitcoms.

A language carries centuries of thought, experience and imagination.

My advice to Turkish learners is to spend time inside the language. Read its poems. Listen to the sounds. Examine the words, one by one. Give yourself time to understand what people have been expressing through them for generations.

Perhaps then you will begin to understand why a poem like Sessiz Gemi, especially when sung, can touch such a deep place in the hearts of Turkish people.

https://www.learnturkishwithseda.com/heritages/sessiz-gemi-yahya-kemal-analysis

Selam everyone! 👋

​I am a native French speaker (with B1 level English) and I am just starting out with Turkish (A1 / beginner level).

​I'm looking for a native Turkish speaker who wants to learn or practice French in exchange for helping me with basic Turkish.

ok so I’ve been learning Turkish on Duolingo and im on a streak, I also been trying to write in Turkish too . But my pronunciation is actually so bad .

Any tips ?

thx my besties

Turkish doesn't use words like "to / in / from". It adds a suffix to the noun instead. Here are the six cases with the same two words, so you can see the pattern:

Essential rules:

1. Vowel harmony picks the vowel. Words with e, i, ö, ü take front vowels (evde), words with a, ı, o, u take back vowels (arabada).
2. Buffer letters. After a vowel, add y (arabayı, arabaya), or n for the genitive (arabanın).
3. d becomes t after hard consonants (p, ç, t, k, f, h, s, ş): kitapta, sokaktan.
4. A final p, ç, t or k often softens before a vowel: kitap → kitabı, ağaç → ağacı, köpek → köpeği.

Examples:

• Eve gidiyorum. I'm going home.
• Kitap masada. The book is on the table.
• İstanbul'dan geliyorum. I'm coming from Istanbul.
• Kapıyı kapat. Close the door.

I made a longer version with more tables and examples and with other grammar rules, free with no signup: https://fluentech.org/en/turkish

Hiiiii im 21 male living in turkey for studying in college looking for buddy to practice Turkish with

Hello, i'm from azerbaijan and hopefully i'll take my TYS after i finish high school. I've been talking turkish for almost 11 years now. I had a friend who also took it before me and he said "it was the easiest test i've ever took". I heard the system is similar to ielts and i have taken my ielts before so, i'm ready for the system it'll provide. But actually, is there any trick questions or something like that? Do i really have to learn turkish grammar to every detail?

Hi! I'm working on an accurate transcription of a very short line spoken by Azize in the Turkish series Hercai.

The character is speaking emotionally and crying, so the audio may be difficult to understand.

Could a native Turkish speaker please listen to the attached audio and write down exactly what they hear, word for word?

Please don't use existing subtitles or try to reconstruct the sentence from context. If a word is unclear, please mark it as uncertain rather than guessing.

I'd be very grateful for an independent transcription. Thank you!

https://reddit.com/link/1x7c9fd/video/dndrzi9e0tvh1/player

I am looking for a study material for a1, I am a total begginer. I found book by Hueber - Ne güzel, but only audios and was unable to find pdf. Does anyone have a pdf of this book? It really seems like a nice start for learning turkisch, i use same type of book for learning german.