r/turkishlearning

Hey, I'd like to share some resources for learning Turkish. Most of them are useful for other languages, as well.

Resources I have used:

• is a free to use site with translation exercises (multiple choice and text input). You'll be presented with a skill tree that you can finish in about a month or two. The course is intended for beginners and the notes assume no knowledge of grammar or linguistics and present things in a very simplified way. The whole course covers a small part of the language, both with respect to vocabulary and grammar, but it has greatly helped me get a somewhat intuitive understanding of the language. There is a text-to-voice bot that you can use for the exercises. Most of the time it's good, but since Turkish is a phonetic language, it's not really necessary. The mods there are quite knowledgeable and helpful. Despite the relatively small number of example sentences, I highly recommend it for beginners. Be sure to read the notes first; AFAIK they're not available on the app, only on the site. Also, buy the "timed practice" as soon as you can (purchased with "lingots", which you get by completing exercises).

• is a huge collection of translated sentences. They use , which is great for getting exact and specific matches. Make sure you know the syntax, if you want to use the site to its full extent. Some of the sentences may be incorrect, but overall the quality is quite good.

• is a detailed grammar book that asummes some familiarity with linguistic terminology. If you're OK with googling some of the terms, this book will give you a thorough account of what you can do with the Turkish language. Although it's not as descriptive as , IMHO it is the best resource in English for Turkish grammar. You can use it as a reference, but I suggest you at least skim over it once and understand the contents structure. PM me if you can't find the book online.

• is the official regulatory body of the Turkish language. I've used it a few times to read about some obscure grammar rules. It also has a dictionary, and probably lots of other features.

• is site/app that let's you listen to make radio stations for free. I listen to CNN Türk and NTV Radyo every day for a few hours. They can speak quite fast most of the time, but it's still a great way to practice your listening comprehension.

• Dictionaries:

• • is an online dictionary that gives you suggestions based on what you've entered in the search field. It's very useful for quickly finding related words and phrases, if you only know the stem. It's both TR-EN and EN-TR.

• • is a pretty comprehensive list of suffixes. You can group them by suffixes, formulas (which takes into account vowel harmony) and functions.

• • is a great resource for exploring the etymological roots of words. IIRC you have to register to use the site to its full extent, but registration is free.

• • is another good dictionary. I find it most useful for phrases.

• has articles on grammar and usage. There are some typos here and there, but overall the quality is pretty good for a beginner.

• has Turkish lessons and a discussion forum. I've only used the forum, so I can't say anything about the lesson quality.

• have Turkish translations and English transcripts for almost every talk. They're great if you want the same text translated into TR and EN. The translations correspond very well to the English text.

• is a software for desktop and mobile. It has a lot of options and many . There are many different views on spaced repetition as a way to learn vocabulary and grammar, both positive and negative. I used it for a few months, but found it pretty repetitive after a while.

• is a news site with English and versions of their articles. I haven't used it much.

• Turkish movies and series are also a good way to get familiar with the Turkish language, especially intonation and phrases. Some are on YouTube (), some you'll only find using torrents. For some movies you'll be able to find both English and Turkish subs. You can merge them into a .ssa file using and play it with VLC. Make sure the subs have the same timing. Alternatively, you can open one of the subs with a text viewer and place it next to the movie player. For song translations, use .

• are a great way to practice listening, because you check the text to check your understanding of the audio version.

• and you can find free Turkish books.

• for pronunciation from people, not bots.

• shows you Turkish sentences, there is a fill-in-the-blank as well as multiple choice questions. It uses sentences from Tatoeba. Clozemaster Pro allows you to favorite sentences and gives your more detailed statistics on your progess. If you won't pay for Clozemaster Pro, you can favorite the sentences in Tatoeba for free. There's an now! The iOS app will .

• is a verb conjugator. Although Turkish verbs are regular, I found it helpful in the beginning.

Resources I haven't used myself:

• has a lot of free Turkish lessons and has iOS and Android apps as well.

• - mainly audio courses.

• - , and articles. It's targeted towards for business people and the course is available in five different languages

• - dialogs, translations, grammar tips, vocabulary, and more - every week. Bite-sized lessons based around a casual and friendly podcast. It's not free, though.

I'll include more resources in the future. Feel free to suggest more resources.

Technical tips that may speed up your learning process:

• In Firefox (probably in other browsers, too) you can create keywords for searching different sites.

• • How it works: go to a site, say YouTube, and right click on the search text area. Select "Add a keyword for this search". Make the keyword something short, but memorable, like "yt". This will add a bookmark, which you can edit later on. Now to search YouTube for "turkish lessons", you can open a new tab (CTRL+T) and just type "yt turkish lessons" and press enter.

• • This trick works for all kinds of sites - dictionaries, torrent sites, eBay, Google, Tatoeba, IMDB, etc.. Over the past few months it has definitely saved me a few hours. Learning some basic hotkeys (CTRL+T, CTRL+W, CTRL+TAB, CTRL+SHIFT+TAB, CTRL+V, CTRL+C) will make your learning process (and browsing in general) much smoother.

Thanks to everyone who pitches in.