Learn Turkish

How to learn Turkish by yourself? Start with an easy and free online course!

We have adopted an objective and efficient approach to learn how to speak a language easily and quickly: we suggest you to start by memorizing words, phrases and practical expressions that you can use in everyday life and that will be useful when traveling.
Getting used to pronounce words out loud, numbers for instance, is an easy exercise that you can practice often and at anytime throughout the day.
It will help you to get used to the sounds of your chosen language and thus make it more familiar.
And once your holidays have begun, in Ankara, Istanbul or elsewhere in Turkey, you will be surprised how familiar and easy to understand it will seem.
Furthermore, using a pocket dictionary is always useful, particularly during a trip. It enables you to find the translation of new words and enrich your vocabulary.

Why speak Turkish while traveling?

A country which straddles East and West 

At the crossroads of Russian, Mediterranean, Balkan and Middle Eastern cultures, the Turkish territory is of great importance in exchanges between these peoples, whether in economic, religious or cultural matters. 
This strategic position has favored the presence of a multi-ethnic population who have built the cultural and linguistic wealth of Turkey through the mixture of Anatolian, Ottoman, Western and Oghuz cultures. Between tradition and modernity, this richness is manifested in the sumptuous architecture of palaces, mausoleums and mosques, in its literature, with authors such as Elif Şafak and Orhan Pamuk (winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 2006), the finesse of its music, or the diversity of its gastronomy, rich in pasta, meats, fish, vegetables and desserts.  Located mainly in Asia, the country is bordered by the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean and the Mediterranean. The Turkish territory also has lakes, forests and two important mountain ranges.
While Ankara is the administrative capital of Turkey, Istanbul, the largest city, is the country's financial, economic and cultural capital. 

Make a success of your stay in Turkey

Whether you are going to spend a few days with friends for a leisure trip or if you are on a business trip, nothing will be more useful to you than to be able to slip a few words in the language of your interlocutors, who will appreciate your effort and will be certainly more willing to help.

How to succeed in having good pronunciation within a week to a month?

A quasi-phonetic alphabet

An official language of Turkey and Cyprus, Turkish is spoken by more than 70 million people. 
To learn the correct pronunciation of Turkish, it must be taken into account that it is an agglutinative language with a widespread use of suffixes. Although the alphabet is quasi-phonetic (it is pronounced as it is read), with letters that almost always correspond to the same sound, the language includes a complex system of vowel harmony that organizes the depth, rounding and aperture of vowels. 

Here are some pronunciation guidelines to get you started in your studies: 

The R is rolled, like the simple R in Spanish.
The L is always velarized as in English.
The K is pronounced as in French: it palatalizes before E, I, Ö, Ü. 
The Ğ is not pronounced, it always appears after a vowel. At the end of the word or before another consonant, it lengthens the vowel that precedes it.
In Turkish it is necessary to pronounce all the letters, since the junction of two letters does not create a new sound. 
We invite you to listen to the pronunciation of the letters by clicking on the following link: Turkish alphabet with audio.