Lonely Planet Turkish Phrasebook

It's well organized, and starts off with a series of helpful short phrases that would help a traveler anywhere: hello, goodbye, thank you, please, where are the toilets, that sort of thing. It then introduces information how to use the negative ('I will be' becomes 'I will not be'), and it provides for English-Turkish or Turkish-English. And it includes a transliteration for every Turkish phrase. But I'm still a bit mystified by some examples, such as the ending of 'mu' or 'musiniz' (should be the turkish 'i' without the dot) in a sentence, and when to use them? But the main issue I had was with the transliteration and not knowing if the g was hard (get) or soft (gentle), or the o was oh or more like uh as in other, if the e was ee or eh, etc. I don't think I'll find out until I get to Turkey and hear a native speaker. A companion website with pronunciations would be a great addition. One other plus - it gives advice on Turkish life in small blurbs here and there.

I am traveling to Turkey this summer and did not want to spend a lot of money for language studies. I speak French, Spanish, and Mandarin. I have been working with a basic Pimsleur course and was having trouble with their inconsistent pronunciation. One example was the word for HELLO, "Merhaba." It was first pronounced (after listening to the word numerous times) "MEER-hah-bah"...the vowell in the first syllable as a long "i" as in American dictionaries or "i" according to the International Phonetic Alphabet. Later on, on another CD I heard the word pronounded as "mehr-hah-bah." I continue to find inconsistancies and contrary to what Pimsleur says and its 5-star rating, I found this little book to be a treasure trove of insights into the Turkish Language and an excellent supplement to the Pimsleur course. This book was designed for those individuals who wish to learn basic Turkish and not long term study of the language. Lonley Planet has done a great job with this little book. Larry Tomaw

It is great to have a handbook written by a native speaker and including modern idiom and usage as well as warnings about which mispronunciations could be a problem. The sections are very well organized

BESIDES THAT IS LONELY PLANET, AND THAT SHOULD SAY ENOUGH, IT'S WRITTEN BY A NATIVE SPEAKER COMPARED TO OTHER PHRASE BOOKS, IT IS REALLY REALLY GOOD!, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!

The book is well organized, and contains most things that I would want to say. Once I get to Turkey I'll see whether I'm able to use it on the fly, but even if it sees little use, it will be a good insurance policy to make sure I can get around.