Elementary Turkish

by Lewis V. Thomas, Norman Itzkowitz (Editor)

Turkish is the primary language of some thirty million people. Anyone concerned with current social, political, and cultural developments in Turkey knows that a practical understanding of the basic patterns of modern Turkish is an invaluable skill that until now has been difficult to attain without extensive training.
This superb grammar and exercise text, used successfully for years in Princeton University, enables English-speaking students — in and out of the classroom — to gain a quick and thorough understanding of modern Turkish. In a carefully arranged sequence of 23 lessons, Lewis V. Thomas, late Professor of Oriental Studies at Princeton, presents thorough coverage that allows the student to begin to use the basic patterns of modern Turkish without time-consuming and expensive private instruction.
The method of instruction was devised after an extensive analysis of results in Princeton classrooms, and relies on exercises at the end of each lesson to test the student's grasp of the material. Beginning with the alphabet and numbers, Professor Thomas offers clear, concise coverage of articles, adjectives and nouns, common infinitives, personal pronouns, and elementary verbs. As the student's comprehension of basic elements develops, further lessons deal with more complicated subjects such as the possessive construction, past general verbs, postpositions, the partitive, progressive verb forms, and abbreviating verb forms. A complete Turkish-English glossary translates new vocabulary occurring in the exercises.
Norman Itzkowitz, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, has skillfully made the necessary revisions and additions to complete Professor Thomas' work. For anyone who needs to communicate in this important and influential language, Professor Thomas' proven course, now in an inexpensive paperback edition, is the most effective method available.

Genres: Language, Reference, Linguistics, Turkish, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[Christian Crowley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a reference book that I picked up to supplement my studies with Teach Yourself, Pimsleur, FSI's old book, and my GLN classes. I'm making my own index for it; I wonder if the publisher would be interested in including that in a next edition. Or perhaps I could publish it online for all to enjoy.

[Rima Alwabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must note that I read this book 8 years ago, and I must say that it was the most beneficial book I’ve ever read!

First I’ve noticed that I’ve started acquiring Turkish naturally from listening (I think I must note here that I’m an Arab who speaks Arabic and English) , then I decided to buy this book, which helped me a lot understand the grammar of the Turkish language, which by the way is very easy (especially to Arabic speakers). This book helped me, through its smooth explanation and the very beneficial exercises at the end of every lesson, refine my knowledge of the Turkish language, which after then I became almost a fluent speaker in (with the constant listening of the language of course), and whenever I would speak with a native speaker they would be amazed by my Turkish language.

The only thing I might say needs improvement is some of the vocabulary in the book, which I noticed were old and not used anymore in the modern day Turkish, but that did not affect the effectiveness of this book’s ability to refine people’s knowledge in the Turkish language.

I am so thankful for it.

[Mateo Jaramillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a vocabulary book, it is strictly grammar and syntax rules. In fact, there's only about 60 verbs used in the whole book so I was lucky to go into this with a bank of words saved to memory already. Otherwise this was a very straightforward introduction text. It felt akin to learning math. Here is a testament to how good the book is at teaching:

Bu kitabı satın aldım. Her gün onu çalıştım. Bir ders her gün okurum. Bazen iki, üç okurum. Dersler kısa ve birçok dersler kolay. İstanbulda yaşayordum. Turkçe bilemedim. Şimdi Turkçe iyi benim anlıyabilmem. Çok anlırım. Bu kitabı bana çok yardım etti. Bu kitabı Duo Lingo'dan iyi.

That may have taken me 20 minutes to write, but I could not express anything besides the present tense and infinitives 1 month ago.

[Annika · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t like this book at first (thought it was a way too outdated), but I actually really think this has given me some valuable insights into Turkish language. Though the book is quite compact it covers pretty thoroughly ”main areas” of the Turkish grammar. I am currently at the level of B2 and I find this book helpful. Glad I bought this. If you consider buying this book I can definitely recommend getting it. Just consider the price (under 10 bucks) - not many Turkish language books can beat the price! ;)

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I downloaded an electronic copy of this book. I am a language nerd who also teaches English to English to adult 2nd language learners. I like language learning materials with grammatical explanations and practice exercises. This book has that. I would buy a hard copy of this book for my own use.

[R · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outdated and full of typos and other mistakes, the text needs a serious review and edition. Nowadays more suitable books to learn Turkish are available.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is close to my model of the perfect language book: concise, well-ordered, isn't afraid of linguistic terminology. Shame it doesn't have an index, though

[Stacey Borsody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Provides a good grammatical sketch of the language with exercises. The book could be greatly improved by writing suffixes with their archiphonemes so as to reduce confusion through visual design. For example: "-DIr" is infinitely more readable than "-t/d V⁴ r".