Customer Reviews
Let down by the audio CD - By: C. P. Dixon, 11 Aug 2008 
The text provides a decent introduction to Turkish for the total beginner, but it is let down somewhat by the audio CDs. The conversations on the CDs make no alllowance for the beginner & the speakers speak at breakneck speed right from the outset. Because Turkish is an agglutinative language & words can become very long through adding various elements together, this makes trying to follow the text while playing the CDs extremely difficult indeed. The speakers should have started speaking more slowly & graduallly picked up the pace throughout the lessons. Fine for learning to read a bit of the language, but poor for the spoken part & thus loses several stars.
Disappointing - By: barbara, 05 Aug 2008 
I found this pack quite hard to work with. I reallly wanted usable every day language for holiday situations & so I probably should have researched what I was buying a little better.The conversations didn't seem relevant & I found the pronounciation indistinct. The recommneded book for a local Turkish class, I am thinking of joining, is by the same author & so I'm not sure I'll get on with that either.
An excellent start for this difficult language - By: F. Samara, 29 Sep 2007 
This is a well written & attractively packaged guide for those starting with absolutely no background in Turkish. Its a difficult language for those more familiar with European / Romance languages - an alien grammar with agglutinative word-building patterns. This book & CD set focuses on set piece conversations which are naturalistic & (as the book progresses) increasingly witty, & the emphasis is thematic & logical, making the lessons easy to grasp. The goal is to equip the reader for interaction in modern professional Turkish; slang is kept to a minimum.
I heartily recommend it, but even this "diet guide" required a struggle (from me!) to learn & secure in memory the necessary vocabulary; for this reason, I am not sure if it is reallly possible to have a "play in the car" CD that can be useful in raising people to a functional Turksih standard - this is not a "Turkish in a day" summary of a few keywords but actuallly a grounding in Turkish grammar (maybe I am merely a little slow?). The material in this book covers roughly the first 5 or 6 chapters of the more comprehensive Teach Yourself Turkish book - the next stage for people who master this material. DO get this if you need a strong introduction to Turkish.
Not for casual study - By: A. Hurden, 27 Sep 2006 I thought I could use this CD set to learn basic Turkish on my commute to work (by car). It's not designed for that type of study - you launch into conversational Turkish immediately after the alphabet.
I gave up after only one listening as it did not meet my needs. This is not a reflection on the course itself - so make sure you know what type of course you want before you buy!
