evlerimizden
from our houses
Endings do the work
Where English adds separate words, Turkish adds endings to the word. Long words are normal, and they are built from the same small pieces every time.
For English speakers
How long does it take to learn Turkish?
Working proficiency takes about 1,100 class hours, or 44 weeks of full-time study, according to the US Foreign Service Institute. Simple everyday conversation comes much sooner: Turkish universities teach the first two levels in about four months of full-time classes.
Class hours to working proficiency
US Foreign Service Institute, for English speakers
The short answer
Three figures to plan with.
1,100
class hours to working proficiency
The US Foreign Service Institute’s estimate for Turkish, for full-time students who have 25 hours of class a week and homework every day.
160–190
class hours per level
What Turkish university language centres (TÖMER) usually plan for each level, about two months of full-time classes.
1,200
words for B1 vocabulary
Where our free vocabulary test starts calling it B1, the level where you get by on your own. See your number
Work out your own timeline
Move the slider to the hours of lessons and focused study you can give Turkish each week. We count 175 hours per level, about the class time Turkish universities plan for one level.
A1about 8 monthsBeginner
A2about 16 monthsElementary
B1about 2 yearsIntermediate
B2about 2.5 yearsUpper intermediate
A rough guide. University students also do homework, and in a one-to-one lesson you don’t share the speaking time with other students. The free tests show how fast you are really moving.
Why it takes a while
Turkish is regular, but it works differently from English. Three things take getting used to.
ev → evler houses
kitap → kitaplar books
Vowels match
An ending changes its vowel to suit the word it joins, so the plural is sometimes -ler and sometimes -lar. It soon becomes automatic, but it is one more thing to think about at first.
Ben Türkçe öğreniyorum.
word for word: “I Turkish am learning”
The verb comes last
Turkish puts the verb at the end of the sentence, so you hear what is happening last, and that takes some practice to follow.
What works in your favour
Some of Turkish is easier than people expect.
Spelled the way it sounds
Turkish uses the Latin alphabet with 29 letters, including ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş and ü. Once you know them, you can read almost any word aloud.
No gender, no “the”
There is no masculine or feminine to memorise and no word for “the”. O means he, she and it.
Very regular grammar
The same endings work for nearly every verb, and Turkish has only a handful of irregular ones.
Free material to start
Our A1 and A2 courses are free: 96 exercises, all open with a free account. Browse free materials
How to get there faster
Four habits that help at any level.
- Speak from the first week.Even short conversations show you what you really remember, and they give the rest of your study a purpose.
- Learn the endings as a system.-ler, -im, -de and -den come back in almost every sentence. Learn them once and every new word gets easier.
- A little every day.Twenty minutes a day keeps the words fresh, so spread your hours across the week.
- Measure every couple of months.Take the free tests again and watch your word count climb.
+3
Find out where you are starting from
Take the free level test, then plan the months ahead with a teacher in a 25-minute first lesson at half price.
Our teachers have given over 7,000 lessons on TurboTalkers.
Questions
Is Turkish hard to learn?
For an English speaker it takes longer than Spanish or French, but the grammar is very regular. The US Foreign Service Institute puts Turkish in the same group as Russian and Greek, between German and Japanese.
Can I learn Turkish in six months?
With about seven hours a week, six months covers one level at the pace Turkish universities plan. That is A1: enough to introduce yourself and get through a café order or a taxi ride. With around fifteen hours a week, you could reach A2.
How many words do I need for a conversation?
On our vocabulary test, about 600 words counts as A2 and 1,200 as B1, the level where you can get by on your own. The test shows where you are in about three minutes.
Should I learn with a teacher or on my own?
You can start on your own with free courses. To speak, though, you need someone to talk to, and a teacher also catches the mistakes you can’t hear yourself.