Teach Yourself Turkish

by Geoffrey Lewis

The aim of this book is to present a picture of the Turkish language as it is now generally spoken in Istanbul and written by the best contemporary Turkish stylists. Nearly all the examples have been chosen from modern Turkish books and newspapers. Those who require knowledge of Turkish for commercial, military, diplomatic or scholarly purposes will need no persuasion to awaken there interest. But there is a reason of another sort for learning the language. The structure of Turkish is simple and logical (it has only one anomalous verb and only one irregular noun); it it, moreover, quite different from the structure of the Indo-European and Semitic languages. Anyone who is seeking a new form of intellectual stimulus will find it a refreshing change to see how many Turkish-speakers clothe the ordinary human thoughts and feelings in a completely new garb.

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, Turkish

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

Geoffrey Lewis was an English Turkologist and the first professor of Turkish at the University of Oxford. He is known as the author of Teach Yourself Turkish and academic books about Turkish and Turkey.

Lewis was born in London in 1920 and educated at University College School and St John's College, Oxford (MA 1945, DPhil 1950; James Mew Arabic Scholar, 1947).

At St John's College Lewis initially studied Classics. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he served from 1940 to 1945 as a radar operator in the Royal Air Force. Posted primarily in Libya and Egypt, he taught himself Turkish through local Turkish acquaintances, from the Turkish newspaper Yedi Gün available in Cairo, and from Turkish translations of English classics sent to him by his wife. He returned to Oxford in 1945 with his newly acquired interest in Turkish and on the advice of H. A. R. Gibb took a second BA degree in Arabic and Persian as groundwork for Ottoman Turkish, which he finished with first-class honours (not achieved in this double subject since Anthony Eden in 1922) in just two years. He spent six months in Turkey before pursuing his doctoral work on a medieval Arabic philosophical treatise at St John's College.

Turkish was not taught at Oxford before Lewis was appointed to his academic post in 1950; it was through his efforts that it became established in the Oxford syllabus of Oriental studies by 1964.