How to learn turkish

Free Turkish lessons

Do you want to speak Turkish? To learn Turkish, you must acquire Turkish words and know how to pronounce them correctly. Our free online lessons are tailored to help you learn Turkish effectively. In addition, our voice recording feature allows you to listen to your pronunciation, providing instant feedback to help you improve your Turkish.

Study Turkish in just 5 minutes a day

LingoHut delivers online Turkish lessons designed the way you learn best. Activities and games make learning more effective, more personal, and more fun. In addition, our drip-feed approach dramatically increases your ability to retain the Turkish language. Thus, preparing you with the Turkish you need for a trip or getting a job.

Learn Turkish & Speak Turkish

Teach yourself Turkish. Learn with 125 free lessons. There is no risk and no contract. Learn to speak Turkish. Totally free!

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Why learn Turkish?

Turkish resource for homeschooling

As homeschooling grows, parents look for good foreign language resources to teach Turkish. Your homeschooler deserves the best platform to learn Turkish, giving them the tools to communicate and understand Turkish. This free homeschool foreign language resource helps build Turkish vocabulary and provides a place to practice the proper pronunciation of Turkish. Does your child want to learn Turkish?

Turkish resource for foreign language teachers

It isn’t easy for a foreign language teacher to find good foreign language resources to help students improve their new Albanian language skills. At LingoHut, we focus on building Albanian vocabulary and teaching the proper pronunciation of Albanian. It is an entirely free resource that foreign language teachers can confidently recommend. Students do not need an account to learn on the website. Do you teach Turkish? Share this free foreign language resource.

Boost your professional development with Turkish language skills

Invest in your future and learn Turkish to accelerate your career. With the rapid pace of change, you must continually update your skills and knowledge. Stand out from the crowd with Turkish language skills.

Learn Turkish and get more out of your travel experience

Before a trip, the best preparation you can do is to learn some Turkish words. Learning Turkish will provide you with a better experience during your travels. Start learning Turkish today at LingoHut.com. Click on any of the 125 + free online Turkish lessons above to start your journey to communicate in Turkish.

Learn Turkish with the «drip-feed» approach

Imagine a dripping faucet, each drop collecting to form a puddle that continues to expand with each drip. Similarly, this approach focuses on understanding Turkish in small increments. Think of each Turkish word as a drop and each Turkish phrase/sentence as a small puddle, which finally becomes the large pool of your new language mastery and success. Bit by bit, step by step, drop by drop, Turkish is integrated successfully into your knowledge base!

How to Learn Turkish: An Introductory Guide for Beginners

written by
Jamie Fisher

The Grand Bazaar, the Ottoman empire, Byzantium, the site of the biblical Garden of Eden, skiing, sandy beaches… Endless history. Whatever culture or taste appeals to you, Turkey promises to keep you fascinated.

I have been involved with the Turkish language and visiting Turkey for over 10 years. I now live in Istanbul, the cultural capital of Turkey, and I feel like I am just scratching the surface of what the country has to offer. But what about the language?

The Turkish language, with its Roman script, is the perfect key to opening up the Middle East and even further flung eastern lands and languages. Yet, you do not meet many people, even independent travellers, who have committed to learning Turkish. Why?

Why Learn Turkish? Here Are 4 Good Reasons

Take it from an experienced speaker, Turkish is one of the most underrated languages to learn, here’s why I think so:

1. Because So Many People Speak Turkish

Turkish is spoken with surprising regularity by the 80,000,000 inhabitants of the country despite a diverse makeup of Turks, Armenians, and Kurds, just to name a few ethnic groups in the country. You can safely travel Turkey’s 8,000 kilometres of Black Sea coast and notice no differences other than a change in accent.

There are also plenty of speakers of Turkish outside of the country. In Bulgaria, it is said that almost 10% of the entire population is ethnically Turkish. Macedonia, Germany, Britain and many other countries have very significant Turkish speaking populations. If you live in a capital city anywhere in the world there is a good chance that the friendly person in your local kebab restaurant is Turkish.

2. Because It’s a Gateway to Many Other Languages

Turkish is, well obviously, a Turkic language. There are many other completely distinct languages that are heavily related and, in many cases, intelligible to Turkish speakers.

Here in Istanbul, meeting and speaking with people from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Azeri speaking parts of Iran, Afghanistan and the Uighur speaking areas of China is a daily occurrence. Of course, there are various degrees of intelligibility, but you get the point. If you are planning an epic round-the-world trip anywhere from Macedonia to China – Turkish is your best friend.

3. Because Turkey Has Everything You Could Possibly Want

This is a huge understatement. Without wanting to sound like I am affiliated with the Turkish tourist board, you can keep yourself entertained here for decades. Consider:

4. Because Turkish People Are Amazingly Friendly

Hospitality is as much part of the culture as cricket is to the British. People seem honour bound to go out of their way to help you even if you are in the very early stages of learning a language. Perhaps because Turkish is not historically a regularly learned language by tourists, Turks seem to take every word you learn as a personal compliment and beam with happiness even at the end of a beginner’s stuttered sentence. They will then make you dinner and introduce you to about a dozen relatives.

How to Learn Turkish: The Key Features of the Language

For Roman script-based language speakers, you will be pleasantly surprised to see that Turkish, whilst spoken in a land so close to countries with Arabic scripts, uses the Roman script. Albeit with a couple of extra letters. For many, there is no need to learn another script.

However, as you peel back the history of the language, you will see that this is only one of the appealing aspects of the language. As part of many of the reforms that took place here, the language was completely wrung out and tidied up in about 1928, removing foreign words and generally regulating the language. Since, particularly grammatically speaking, very few exceptions have crept back into the language. There are reportedly only 13 irregular verbs in the entire language.

You may already have seen Benny Lewis, founder of Fluent in 3 Months, showing off his impressive Turkish skills. Benny makes a good point regarding reading Turkish: it is very simple. Although there are some false friends with letters that are pronounced differently to English, Turkish is a perfectly phonetic language to read. In fact, one trap that a number of my friends have fallen into is that they impress themselves by reading accurately and enthusiastically, without actually studying the meaning of what they are reading. Beware of easy rides in languages!

Turkish is known as an agglutinative language. That means suffixes are added to the verb stem to provide grammatical meaning. This can lead to some very impressive long words, my personal favourite being Teşkilatlandırıldıklarından which means “Because of their having been organized”. Say what? Let’s break this down:

Simple! Well this is an extreme example, and in truth, words of this length are not regularly used in conversation. However, the principle is that once you have learned the finite number of suffixes, you can then conjugate any verb accurately.

Another example: the suffix for the first person singular – “um”

Whilst it is true that the rules of vowel harmony may create minor changes regarding spelling and pronunciation, the form and conjugation of Turkish is extremely consistent. You will not encounter verb forms that have departed significantly from the simple infinitive like in French and Spanish.

What You’ll Need to Get Your Head Around to Learn Turkish

Turkish was the first foreign language I learned. Once I got my head around the following three concepts, the rest fell into place:

Speakers of French will be delighted to know that for historic reasons, there are many French words in Turkish. These are used on an everyday basis, particularly in the west of Turkey. For religious reasons there are also many Arabic words in daily use such as dünya (“world”) and kitap (“book”).

My Favourite Resources for Learning Turkish

Here are some of the common language learning resources that can also be used for Turkish:

Learn Turkish

“Babbel is one of the stalwarts of the online language-learning sphere.”

“Babbel exceeds expectations, delivering high-quality, self-paced courses.”

If you have always wanted to learn Turkish, you’re nowhere near alone; tens of thousands of people study the language every day around the world. And it’s no wonder! Turkish is a language that captures a rich and complex culture and history.

But you might have a lot of questions about why you should learn Turkish or what it takes to get started — or why it’s even worthwhile at all. The good news is you can rest assured that learning the Turkish language is an effort worth undertaking. With the right tools and technology to guide you in your journey, you’ll see your efforts pay off in so many ways.

Why Learn Turkish?

Learning any new tongue is a challenge that can open up your mind to new perspectives and help you connect with all types of people across boundaries of land and language. When it comes to learning Turkish, these reasons are especially true.

To start, if you know the Turkish language, you open yourself up to a world of Turkish speakers. There are roughly 78 million people on Earth who speak Turkish as a first language, and millions who speak it to some degree as a second or third language.

You’ll obviously find Turkish all over Turkey, where it’s the official language and home to the vast majority of the language’s native speakers. But you might not know that there are whole populations of Turkish speakers scattered throughout Western and Central Europe in places like Germany, home to about 1.5 million Turkish migrants, and the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and France. As you head a bit farther east, you’ll find Turkish speakers in places like Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia and Romania. And there are also hundreds of thousands of Turkish speakers in the Middle East and Central and Western Asia in places like Iraq, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

You might want to learn Turkish for its links to other world languages. Turkish, a Turkic language, is closely related to all of the other languages in the same family, like Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkmen, Kyrgyz and Uyghur, among dozens of other languages throughout Eastern Europe, Siberia and pockets of Central Asia. If you ever want to learn the other Turkic languages, there’s no doubt that if you learn Turkish, you’ll have a learning advantage right from the start, as the languages share similar vocabulary and grammar structures that make them somewhat mutually intelligible with one another!

Benefits Of Learning Turkish

Picking up a new skill can help you express your creativity, stimulate your mind, and discover new sides of yourself along the way. Learning a new language like Turkish is no exception! Here are just a few of the many ways you can make a positive impact on your life if you learn Turkish.

Learn Turkish Basics: Turkish Lesson For Beginners

Learning The Turkish Alphabet, Turkish Spelling And Turkish Pronunciation

Turkish underwent a major series of reforms in the early 1900s after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the Turkish Republic, where Modern Turkish was born, replacing the Arabic script of Middle Ottoman Turkish with the Latin script used in today’s Modern Turkish.

Even though Turkish uses an alphabet familiar to many English speakers, when you look at Turkish spelling, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. There are actually 29 letters in the Turkish alphabet, six of which — ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş and ü — aren’t in the English alphabet. All those diacritic marks in a word like güneş gözlüğü (“sunglasses”) and undotted ı characters in a word like kâğıt (“paper”), for example, can seem very daunting! But luckily, Turkish pronunciation isn’t always as hard as it seems.

In Turkish, each letter is pronounced one and only one way, meaning that reading Turkish is very phonetic, unlike English. (Think about how a non-English speaker might struggle with words like “cough,” “colonel” and “knight.”) So it can become quite easy to look at a Turkish word you’ve never seen and know how to pronounce it.

Another element of Turkish pronunciation that makes it a bit smoother to grasp is a phenomenon known as vowel harmony, which means that words feature vowels that are articulated either in the front of the mouth or in the back of the mouth, helping the pronunciation sound smoother and more consistent. It’s a rule you’ll get to know much better as you learn Turkish.

Don’t worry if you can’t master Turkish spelling, a typical Turkish accent or the trickiest of Turkish pronunciations right away; it takes time and practice! The best way to remember these rules is just to practice over and over, especially by reading texts out loud. Watching Turkish TV, movies or YouTube videos or listening to Turkish-language podcasts, radio and film can certainly help you master Turkish pronunciation and sound like a native Turkish speaker.

Turkish Vocabulary

Because Turkish and English belong to different language families, there isn’t a lot of overlap in their vocabularies. This means you’re going to have to learn a lot of new words that have Turkic roots, and it might take some extra time and practice.

Though most words in today’s Turkish are of Turkic origin, the biggest foreign influences come from Arabic, French and Persian. There’s also a handful of words of Italian, Greek and even English origin, meaning you might be able to pick up on the meanings of some words just by looking at them — like the adjectives akademik and organik, the nouns müzik and stadyum or the number milyon, for example.

When it comes to unfamiliar Turkish vocabulary words you will need to learn, there’s no wrong way to master them. Some people prefer to use flashcards to learn vocabulary. Others find success with the sticky note method, asking a friend to quiz them on a list of words or something else entirely. It’s up to you!

Basics Of Turkish Grammar

Like in English, there is no gender classification in Turkish, meaning you don’t have to deal with learning the often arbitrary system of grammatical categorization that exists in many other world languages. The language even uses the same word for “he,” “she” and “it”! Pronouns are often left out anyways, as the verb ending usually indicates who’s doing the verb action. You’ll likely be relieved to learn, too, that Turkish has no articles — the words “the,” “a” and “an” that can cause learners a lot of trouble and confusion in other world languages.

Though there are some easy parts of Turkish grammar, you’ll find that Turkish grammar has some more complex elements that might prove tricky for some native English speakers. For example, the word order of Turkish sentences most often follows a subject-object-verb pattern, as opposed to the subject-verb-object order that’s typical in English. And one major trouble spot for many new learners is that Turkish is an agglutinating language, which means its words essentially grow longer as suffixes are added to a root word to indicate verb tense, negation, plurality, and more. As a result, whole sentences and thoughts can be conveyed by one word, which on the surface can appear very complicated — take yaramazlaştırılamayabilenlerdenmişsiniz (“you seem to be one of those people who is incapable of being naughty”), for example — but you’ve just got to approach them one sound at a time.

As you learn Turkish, you’ll get to know the rules governing how Turkish verbs, nouns and other parts of speech behave in certain situations. It’s all part of the process of learning Turkish grammar!

Basic Turkish Phrases And Turkish Greetings

To speak like a native Turkish speaker, there are certain must-know Turkish phrases and expressions that will help you navigate your way through a conversation.

The best place to start, of course, is with “hello”! There are many greetings in Turkish to choose from, the most common of which is Merhaba! (“Hello!”). This greeting is appropriate in almost any context, so it’s a safe bet to use in most situations. With peers and close friends, selam (“greetings”) is a popular option, too. There are even special greetings for guests and visitors, like hoş geldin for a singular visitor you know familiarly or hoş geldiniz for a group of guests or one you know more formally.

For more time-conscious greetings, günaydın (“good morning,” or literally, “the day is bright”) is great if it’s before noon. After noon passes and before evening starts, you can opt for tünaydın or iyi günler, both of which can be translated to “good day.” And after the sun sets, iyi akşamlar (“good evening”) is a classic option.

As you learn Turkish, you’ll get familiar with basic Turkish phrases like Ne haber? (“How’s it going?”) and Nasılsınız and its more casual form Nasılsın? (“How are you?”), to which a classic response is İyilik, senden? (“Good, and you?”). If you’re meeting someone for the first time, you’ll want to talk about who you are and perhaps where you’re from. To introduce yourself in Turkish, you can say Benim adım X (“My name is X”) or Ben X (“I’m X”). To find out other people’s first names, you can ask Senin adın ne? (“What is your name?”) in a more familiar context and Sizin adınız nedir? if you want to be more formal.

To say goodbye in Turkish, you have a couple of options. For more religious Turks and in more formal situations, you’ll often hear the person leaving say Allah’a ısmarladık! (“May Allah keep you safe!”), to which a common response from the person staying behind is Güle güle, something like “Leave with a laugh,” or hoşça kalın, which can be translated as a regular old “goodbye.” You can shorten this one to hoşça kal for a more casual goodbye with a singular friend. Other ways to say goodbye include Görüşmek üzere! (“See you soon!”) and Yarın görüşürüz! (“See you tomorrow!”).

There are many other useful conversational Turkish words, phrases and expressions you’ll get to know as you learn Turkish, from evet (“yes”), hayır (“no”), bakar mısınız (“excuse me”), lütfen (“please”) and teşekkürler (“thank you”) to X nerede? (“Where is X?”) and İngilizce konuşabiliyor musun(uz)?, or “Can you speak English?”

When you learn these Turkish phrases and hundreds more like them, you’ll be better able to communicate with native Turkish speakers with ease.

Ways To Learn Turkish

There is no right answer when it comes to how to learn Turkish — or any new language. With so many options for your language journey, it’s no surprise that choosing a learning style or method can be overwhelming!

Of the many people who speak and study Turkish as a non-native language, you’ll find folks who have used all sorts of resources to learn the language, some free, some fairly cheap, and some more of a financial investment. There’s no right combination, and it’s up to you to decide which methods work best for you to learn Turkish.

What’s The Quickest And Easiest Way To Learn Turkish?

You’ll find that the fastest and easiest way to learn Turkish is the way that offers you the least amount of friction — so if you can’t stand shuffling through textbook pages or you get bored flipping Turkish flashcards, you might want to stick to a method that’s more exciting or engaging. Knowing yourself is key to success. Here are just a few of the ways to learn Turkish quickly:

Learning Turkish In The Classroom

The Turkish language is studied in school systems and universities around the world. Turkish classroom learning is often the most popular option for learners in grade school or university settings. It allows more intensive, regular study with feedback from teachers who know the Turkish language and can correct mistakes as they happen and teach content in an interactive way. Depending on how large a class is and how engaged the teacher is, learning in a classroom might be a less personalized experience, but having other students to talk to and practice with is a valuable resource for a learner of any language.

Though full-time students make up a large proportion of Turkish classroom learners, plenty of adults enroll in Turkish classes, too. Many cities and communities offer free or fairly cheap language classes, and you’ll be very likely to find them in popular languages like Turkish. Though a full-time job might limit your schedule, a commitment to a once- or twice-weekly Turkish class after work or on the weekends can really improve your Turkish language skills in a measurable way.

Learning Turkish With A Turkish Tutor

Private Turkish tutoring offers a more tailored learning experience than traditional classroom learning with many of the advantages. Having a skilled Turkish tutor at hand who can help you perfect your pronunciation and work with you closely on the aspects of Turkish that cause you trouble is a great way to improve your skills fast — without a teacher needing to split time and attention among multiple students. And Turkish tutoring doesn’t have to be inconvenient at all; many sessions can and do take place over video call instead of in person.

But the often steep costs of such individualized instruction can be a barrier to many learners. Well trained master Turkish tutors often charge high hourly rates for their lessons, so finding a top-quality, budget-friendly option can be challenging.

Software and Online Turkish Courses

There are many top-notch, expert-designed online Turkish courses and programs that run from reasonably priced to very expensive. They allow you to learn Turkish on your own time and are often more interactive and engaging than many free courses and resources. Plus, many of the best products out there are constantly updated with new, fresh material, so you can get the most relevant Turkish learning experience available.

Can You Learn Turkish For Free?

All of the above options have one thing in common: they cost money. For those learners who want to be more conscious of their budgets or are okay with spending more time finding and working with more cost-effective content, there are still plenty of options to learn Turkish for free or for cheap!

Free Online Turkish Courses And Apps For Learning Turkish

There’s no shortage of free Turkish courses, apps and content you can find on the web and on your phone. From Turkish grammar wikis to online forums and Turkish classes, you’re sure to find hundreds of options that might do the trick. Some of them are better than others in the ways they’re organized and how thoroughly they explain new concepts, so take them with a grain of salt.

Be aware that the tradeoff of a free product is that it usually sacrifices quality. Much of the content that’s in free apps or that’s scattered around the web comes from user-generated translations that are rarely verified and are often inconsistent or riddled with errors. These lessons often focus on writing and reading without much of a way to improve listening and speaking skills. And be wary that free interactive Turkish lessons like these can often be basic, poorly designed, messy, rigid, and just downright boring — not to mention littered with ads.

That’s not to say these Turkish resources can’t be helpful! But it’s important to know how and where to fill in the gaps in your language learning journey when certain content isn’t enough.

Learning Turkish With Native Turkish Speakers

Tandem learning is a technique where two people who speak different native languages meet up to help each other learn, swapping roles as teacher and student. For example, if you spend one hour teaching a friend who’s a native Turkish speaker something about English, he or she would then spend the next hour teaching Turkish to you. This is an effective method when both people are able to commit significant time and thought to the partnership, but keep in mind that not everyone is a good teacher. Explaining why your native language works the way it does is often easier said than done; you might understand English grammar subconsciously and use it flawlessly all the time but not be able to explain to a Turkish person or Turkish speaker the rules that govern how you’re supposed to use that grammar.

Immersion Turkish Learning

Turkish immersion programs or some form of immersive Turkish language travel are definitely the most extreme and intensive ways to learn a new language, and they’re not for everyone. (They’re also not technically free if you count airfare to a new place and all the costs of living associated with wherever you go.) But without a doubt, immersing yourself in a new culture and a place that doesn’t speak your language and surrounding yourself with native Turkish speakers will force you to make rapid progress in Turkish or another target language as you struggle to communicate and understand those around you.

Of course, you’ll want to start with at least a little foundation in a new language before picking up your life and plunging yourself into a completely foreign locale. Using resources like Babbel, language textbooks and Turkish classes, and practice with Turkish native speakers can all help you prepare before you make a big transition through Turkish immersion.

Useful Turkish Media To Learn Turkish For Free Or Cheap

When you don’t have access to Turkish classes and teachers or even native Turkish speakers, there are still plenty of Turkish media resources to help you get on your way to fluency in Turkish. Most of them can be accessed for free online or from a library or found for very cheap — or even through a subscription for a streaming service like Netflix or Spotify you’re likely already paying for!

Books To Learn Turkish

If you like to read, you’ll find a whole range of literature written in Turkish that can help you master the Turkish language. There are thousands of Turkish books that make great learning resources for beginner and intermediate Turkish learners, from collections of reinterpreted classic folk tales like Nasrettin Hoca Hikâyeleri, ideal for beginner learners, to longer, more substantive reads like the postmodern historical fiction novel Benim Adım Kırmızı, best for intermediate to advanced students of Turkish.

Using books to learn Turkish is a great way to sharpen your reading skills and to understand how the Turkish language is used in a whole wide range of contexts, from historical fiction to fairy tales to personal essays to collections of short stories to nonfiction and everything in between. Reading books in Turkish helps you move at your own pace, and you can stop to consult a Turkish dictionary if you need extra help along the way. Keeping a language journal of unfamiliar Turkish words and expressions helps you build your vocabulary. Plus, you can get some extra speaking and Turkish pronunciation practice by reading the book aloud.

Learning Turkish With Audio Lessons, Turkish Songs And Turkish Podcasts

There are many online Turkish audio lessons you can find that can teach you the basics of Turkish vocabulary and grammar without needing to look at a page or a screen. Turkish audio lessons are great for multitasking; you can listen to them in the car or in the background of another activity, like commuting to work, cooking dinner or taking a walk in your neighborhood.

Similarly, Turkish podcasts and Turkish audiobooks are a great way to learn passively while you do something else that requires your visual attention. Luckily, there are lots of audio resources to pick from, and many of them are free. Turkish podcasts like Let’s Learn Turkish are great for beginners and intermediate learners who want to practice vocabulary and grammar topics in an easy-to-follow format, and others like Açik Bilim (“Open Science”) are better for advanced learners who want a more technical dive into science topics in Turkish.

And listening to Turkish songs can be a great learning method, too. With songs, a chorus or group of lyrics is often repeated more than once, giving you plenty of opportunities to hear lyrics over and over. You can find many playlists of Turkish songs on Spotify that are often organized by proficiency level, too, from beginner playlists to more advanced ones.

It’s important to keep in mind that to really master a language, you’ve got to do more than just listening to it; you’ll probably want to supplement audio with ways to practice writing, reading, and speaking Turkish, too.

Learning With Turkish TV Shows And Turkish Movies

Watching Turkish movies and Turkish TV shows is an excellent way to connect with the Turkish language in a fun, engaging format. You can find a lot of good Turkish-language content of all different genres and for all learning proficiency levels on streaming services like Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime.

When you’re watching, you can choose to display subtitles in Turkish for some extra reading practice. Try to avoid watching media dubbed in your native language, as you won’t end up hearing any Turkish! If the dialogue is too fast, you can pause what you’re watching to give yourself a chance to process what you’re hearing and look up and write down unfamiliar words. And when you use movies and TV series to learn Turkish, don’t be afraid to break them up into chunks to give your brain some rest.

Learning Turkish With Babbel

The goal of learning any language is to have real-life conversations with native speakers. So a language learning app should be designed to get you to that goal in the best way possible. It’s important to dedicate the time and effort to practicing with discipline, but outside of your own personal commitment, you’ve got to have technology that knows how to help you most effectively along the way.

Luckily, Babbel is designed by a team of language experts, educators, and designers who know all about what it takes to get the most out of learning a new language — so you are guaranteed a top-quality Polish learning journey that’s capable, engaging, and yes, even fun.

Here are the key ways Babbel Turkish lessons are crafted to get you having real-life conversations in Turkish with confidence, and all for less cost per month than your morning coffee.

The Full Spectrum Of Language Learning

Learning a foreign language is an endeavor of many dimensions. It takes a lot of skills and patience to learn how to start speaking on the spot, to write a text to a friend, or to translate dialogue you hear from a TV show in your target language.

We know how to make these elements work together to your advantage. Babbel’s lessons are interactive and cover all the aspects of learning Turkish — reading, writing, listening, and speaking — with multimedia Turkish content to train your ears and eyes. Our speech recognition feature even helps you hone your Turkish pronunciation, too.

Turkish Learning On Your Terms

One of the best parts of learning with Babbel is being able to fit lessons in seamlessly when you want them and where you want them. Our bite-size lessons take roughly between 10 and 20 minutes to complete and can be squeezed into your already busy schedule, whether you’re on your commute or waiting for a pot of water to boil as you cook dinner.

With Babbel, you can pick and choose the topics and themes that are most relevant to you. Taking a trip soon? Brush up on the Turkish you’ll need for travel and navigating new places. Need to sharpen your Turkish for an upcoming business meeting? Our Turkish language courses have you covered.

The iOS and Android apps are fully integrated with the web application. And your progress is saved in the cloud and synced across all devices — so you can learn Turkish anytime, anywhere.

Learn Turkish — And Make Sure It Sticks

What good is committing to learning a foreign language if you’ll forget it before you even have a chance to use it? That’s why your personalized Babbel Review feature is optimized to help you retain the information you’re learning.

It takes advantage of the concept of microlearning, or bringing back information in short bursts to help you hold on to it better. You can practice writing, listening to, and speaking the Turkish phrases, terms and expressions you’ve learned in your earlier lessons to lock them into your brain.

For Turkish Learning, Try Babbel

We’re committed to making sure you get the most out of learning Turkish. We offer a free first lesson in every language so you can get a feel for if Babbel works for you. And if you don’t like it, we have a 20-day money-back guarantee — no questions asked.

Try a free Turkish lesson with Babbel and see for yourself how quickly you’ll be on your way to speaking Turkish with confidence — like you’ve always wanted to!

Learn Turkish For Beginners‪!‬ 4+

Learning Words With Lessons

Mobiteach.ltd

Designed for iPad

Screenshots

Description

Turkish for Beginners. That’s your fast start!

Would you like to learn Turkish easily and quickly?
Would you like to study Turkish from the beginning?
Are you looking for a good application to study Turkish?
Application was developed for those, who want to get basic knowledge of conversational Turkish quickly and free of charge!
The content is being developed by leading methodologists and linguists, who teach at the universities. Quality is here!
Study Turkish words in the application Turkish for Beginners. Studying Turkish has never been so easy and simple!

Do you need a certain topic for studying? You can choose among the most important topics for studying Turkish.
Family and friends
Life
Parts of body
Describing people
Clothes
Numbers
Colours
Calendar and time
Holidays
Emotions
Shoes and accessories
Hobbies and interests
Sport
School
Education
Professions
Computer
The world around us
Home
Prepositions and adverbs
Bedroom
Bathroom
Kitchen
Household chores
Cooking
Vegetables
Fruit and berries
Food and drinks
Weather
City and country
Village
Transport
Shops and shopping
Free time
Books and art
Music
Cinema and theatre
Media
Travelling
Nature and environment
Politics
Health
Toys

Are you ready to spend 5-20 minutes a day for the lesson? Regularity is very important!
Lesson content:
Learn how to speak. You can improve your pronunciation of Turkish words and overcome language barrier.
Learn to understand. Identify the object, which corresponds to Turkish words.
Learn how to read and translate into Turkish. Read all the options of the words and choose that one which corresponds to the picture.
And the most difficult is spelling. Make a word from the letters.

How important is it for you to see your success? We have a report about your achievements!
success in learning Turkish words
success in pronunciation of Turkish words
success in spelling of Turkish words

Tell your friends about your progress:
share the link on Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin or any other social network.

18 Steps to Learn Turkish for Beginners

By OptiLingo • 14 minute read

How to Learn Turkish in 18 Simple Steps

Turkish is an awesome language. And with 80 million speakers worldwide, speaking it fluently will definitely benefit you. But, how do you go about learning Turkish? What are your first steps toward fluency? Turkish for beginners can seem very daunting. That’s why we came up with this ultimate guide for how to learn Turkish. You can easily achieve fluency. Just follow these 18 steps for the best way to learn Turkish fast.

How Long Does It Take to Learn Turkish?

There’s no number for how long it takes to learn a language. It really depends on you. Your motivation, native language, and the language learning method you use. But, if you’re an English native speaker, you can use the US Foreign Service Institute estimates as guidance. Turkish is a Category IV language, which should take 44 weeks or 1100 hours to master.

What this estimate doesn’t account for is you. Your drive and enthusiasm go a long way to reaching Turkish fluency faster. And, if you follow the 18 steps below, you’re bound to master the Turkish language much faster.

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What Are The Benefits Of Learning Turkish?

There are countless benefits to learning a foreign language. But, there are a lot of reasons why you should learn Turkish. These are just a taster of the many benefits of learning Turkish:

18 Steps to Learn Turkish for Beginners

With these 18 steps, you’ll surely reach Turkish fluency. And you can do it on your own. Reach Turkish fluency fast from the comfort of your home. After these, you’ll know exactly how to learn Turkish for beginners.

1. Find the Best Way to Learn Turkish for You

Here are some of the most popular options for how you can learn Turkish. All of these are great. But the best way to learn Turkish is with the method that works for you. Enjoy your lessons and progress fast with any of these:

2. Master the Turkish Alphabet

The first step of learning Turkish for beginners has to be learning the alphabet. Luckily, the Turkish alphabet looks very familiar to native English speakers. Turkish uses Latin letters, so its alphabet is almost the same as English. Almost …

There are a few letters that are slightly different. Ö, ü, and ç are some examples of these special characters. These accents and modifications are there to show you that you need to pronounce them differently. That’s because Turkish is a phonetic language.

3. Beginners Should Read Turkish

Turkish is incredibly easy to read. Since it’s written phonetically, each letter corresponds with one sound and is pronounced separately. There are 29 letters in the Turkish alphabet. There are no double consonants in Turkish. And there are only a few irregularities. Some easy reading rules you should look out for are:

Learning to read Turkish early on gives you a great advantage. You can read newspapers, Turkish blogs, and textbooks that much faster.

4. Get Familiar With Turkish Grammar

Turkish grammar is very easy to understand because it’s very logical and it only has a few irregularities. The conjugation of verbs is consistent, there are no genders, and there are no articles in Turkish either. I bet you’re a relieved Turkish beginner. But, you still need to spend a little time with Turkish grammar.

Vowel Harmony

Turkish is an agglutinative language. This means that you need to take the root of the word and attach suffixes to it. But, to decide which suffixes suit the roots, you need to take a look at vowel harmonies. You’ll hear in the melody of the word. As you’re progressing towards Turkish fluency, you’ll develop a natural feel for vowel harmony.

Verbs And Tenses

A very important part of learning Turkish grammar is mastering verbs. You need to learn how to conjugate verbs in the present, future, and past tense to reach fluency. By committing the most important Turkish verbs to memory, you’ll surely sound like a local when you talk.

5. Master the Types of Sentence Structure

While this is part of Turkish grammar, it deserves its own step. That’s because it’s very different from English, and you have to get used to that. English is an SVO (subject-verb-object) language. Turkish, however, has an SOV (subject-object-verb) sentence structure. Let’s take a look at this through a quick example:

“Mary” is the subject, she’s the one that does the action.“eats” (yiyor) is the verb, also known as the action. And “an apple” (bir elma) is the object, which is affected by the action. As you can see, the Turkish sentence structure puts the object first, and then the verb. This isn’t impossible to master, but it does take a bit to get used to.

6. Get Used to Turkish Suffixes

As I mentioned before, Turkish is an agglutinative language. So, you’ll need to take the parts of Turkish and build the words yourself. You’ll need to look at the root of the verb and add suffixes to signal location, prepositions, and plurality (with vowel harmony in mind).

Sometimes suffixes change nouns into adjectives. Or they describe a person’s profession. There are a lot of variations, but don’t worry. These building blocks of the Turkish language aren’t impossible to master either. For Turkish beginners, the best advice is to break down the words into the root, and analyse all the suffixes that got piled on. Let’s take an example:

The phrase, “where are you from?” Translates to “nerelisin”. When you break it down it becomes quite simple. Ne-re-li-sin.

7. Focus on Common Turkish Words

For a beginner, learning Turkish vocabulary can seem like a huge task. Committing thousands of new words to memory is a scary thought. It’s especially scary when you realize that you don’t need to do that. Too many language learners waste time learning unnecessary vocabulary.

What you should focus on instead are the most common words and phrases in Turkish. Because that’s exactly how real Turkish locals speak. They only use 20% of their vocabulary for 80% of their conversation. So, you can access most of the Turkish everyday speech with minimal vocabulary. That’s the best way to learn Turkish and the fastest road to fluency.

8. Start Speaking Turkish From Day 1

Turkish beginners, listen up. This advice is the ultimate best way to learn Turkish and reach fluency in record time. Not enough language learners do this, but you really need to: start speaking Turkish from your first lesson onwards.

Don’t worry about your accent. Disregard your fear of embarrassment. Don’t even think about not knowing enough vocabulary/grammar rules/ Turkish recipes. Just start speaking. Pronounce everything. Get familiar with the language. Soon, you’ll be comfortable with speaking Turkish. And that’s the true key to speaking Turkish fluently for beginners.

9. Write Your Turkish Lessons Down

10. Beginners Should Practice a Lot

As with any language, the best way to learn Turkish is to practice a lot. You need plenty of reading, writing, listening, and especially speaking practice to reach fluency. Find as many opportunities as you can to listen to or talk in Turkish. For beginners, it’s crucial to make Turkish learning an everyday activity.

Fortunately, even if you’re busy, you have time to learn Turkish. Combine your Turkish lessons with everyday activities. Tune in to a podcast while you clean, review yesterday’s lesson on your commute, or listen to some Turkish music at the gym. 20 minutes every day can already yield great results.

11. Make Learning Turkish Fun

This is possibly the best advice for learning Turkish. Make sure you have fun and you enjoy yourself. If you’re having a blast, you won’t think about how long it takes to reach fluency. You’ll just enjoy the journey. And most importantly, you won’t give up.

The tips for learning Turkish for beginners that came before are a must. And the tips below are more fun and entertaining ways to practice Turkish. The point is to immerse yourself in the language as much as you can. Listen, read, sing Turkish whenever you can. The more you do, the faster you’ll become fluent. Pick and choose your favorite activities, and reach Turkish fluency easily and fast.

12. Listen to the Sounds of Turkish

Improving your listening skills in Turkish is crucial. That’s how you get used to the sounds of the language. And that’s how you’ll know what the correct pronunciation sounds like. So, take every opportunity you can to listen to Turkish every day. Audio files can fine-tune your ear for the rhythm and melody of the language. Here are a few activities for beginners to start listening to Turkish audio today:

13. Watch Turkish Movies and TV

This is a fun way to learn Turkish. If you are serious about learning Turkish, chose a movie, documentary or long speech that you are very familiar with, and then listen to it in Turkish. Do this repeatedly. Soon you will begin to recognize word, phrases, and inflections. If you have a movie you do not mind watching over and over in Turkish, and you understand the version made in your native language, you have a great chance to learn the language quickly.

The Turkish film industry isn’t that prominent. But, Turkish TV definitely is. World-class TV shows and soap operas grace Turkish television. Some popular shows are “ The Protector ” and “ Dirilis: Ertugrul “. They’re well made, exciting, and a great start for easy Turkish lessons for beginners.

14. Sing Turkish Songs

Why study Turkish when you can sing yourself to fluency? Find Turkish songs that you like, and give them a listen. Listening to them over and over again shows you the rhythm and melody of the language. Look up the lyrics to learn more vocabulary. And, for the best way to learn Turkish, sing it yourself.

Don’t worry about being off-key. You’re not auditioning for Turkish X-Factor. You’re learning a language. And singing is basically the same thing as speaking. You get comfortable with speaking Turkish, and your pronunciation will improve too.

15. Bring Turkish to You With Post-Its

You can easily enforce practicing Turkish daily by creating post-it notes. Write down common vocabulary, and stick them on your everyday items. You’re bound to come face-to-face with Turkish in your house. This is an easy trick to remember your Turkish lessons. And it also enforces the handwriting trick I told you about earlier. Turkish for Beginners becomes a lot easier and much more colorful.

16. Make Turkish Friends

Turkish people are known for their kindness and hospitality. And if they find out that you’re learning Turkish, you’ll be their favorite person. They really appreciate your effort and interest in their culture. So, they’ll do everything in their power to help you. Ask them advice on pronunciation, or verb conjugation. Their accents are worth copying.

17. Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes

So many language learners are afraid of making mistakes. Fearing embarrassment, offense, or messing up only limits you. Don’t let language learning anxiety limit your success. The more you worry about meaningless hiccups, the longer it will be until you reach fluency.

Keep in mind that you’re learning a language. You’re literally working on understanding a different way to process reality. Expanding your mind. Becoming a better version of yourself and improving your life. That’s awesome! Nothing to be embarrassed or shy about. Celebrate your achievements with confidence. Be proud of yourself.

18. Use the Best App to Learn Turkish

You can combine the best of these ways to learn Turkish by using a language learning app. It’s not just convenient to have your lessons in your pocket. It’s also much cheaper than joining a class or hiring a tutor. Luckily, the best apps to learn Turkish are all built on scientifically-proven methods. So, they’re guaranteed to bring you fluency. And the best of them is undoubtedly OptiLingo.

OptiLingo is effective and brings you to fluency fast. It gives you the most common Turkish phrases, so you learn exactly how the locals speak. OptiLingo also has built-in spaced repetition. This technique helps you remember your lessons. You won’t have to memorize or drill. OptiLingo helps you recall Turkish automatically. Achieve Turkish fluency successfully by downloading OptiLingo today!