201 Turkish Verbs (201 verbs series)

The content of this small book is ideal for students and the keen tourist or new settler alike. It is neater and more compact than the 501 Verbs series. If you really need to know how to make the language "work" for you there is no better way to back up your lessons than with a verb table to learn from. I found the author's introduction helpful and enlightening as well. (Talat Sait Halman was Turkey's Ambassador for Cultural Affairs and former Minister of Culture and formerly of New York, Princetown and Columbia Universities).

So why only four stars? Well, in a word, presentation! In spite of it having a good cover and excellent paper quality, in line with all the other Barron's publications, the interior was in a truly awful reporter's font with huge commas dominating the page (like an old-fashioned typewriter!) and the margins were skimpy and encroached upon so much that in one or two places the last letter was snipped off. It has been suggested to me that it may have been due to a problem of finding a printer in China who could deal with the Turkish alphabet in 1981 when the book was first published but I doubt it! Mine is an American edition though so whether this is true of any UK one I don't know.

So whilst I can heartily recommend this for its brilliant content and its neat size, don't expect it to be the same as the equally amazing, but larger and better presented, 501 German Verbs (indispensible in Germany, Austria and Switzerland!).

After hunting around for a book to help with verb conjugations I found this and it really does the job. It explains simply the basic rules of grammar. presents the verbs in all conjugations and provides a full list of verbs. The presentation of the book does not reflect its usefulness since it is all in simple text and appears quite understated. If anyone is trying to learn this confusing language I would recommend this wholeheartedly.