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Türkçe · English

Learn Turkish with short stories

Read Turkish books with English alongside, or English books with Turkish alongside: the original and the translation side by side, paragraph by paragraph.

Free Turkish–English stories and ebooks

Stories to read in Turkish, with the English beside each paragraph. They open in the browser, with no account needed, and each one is also a free Turkish–English ebook for Kindle, Kobo or any e-reader: downloading needs a free account, no payment (which file to pick).

By level:

Free graded readers in Turkish

Every story here carries its level on the Common European Framework, from A1 for beginners to C1 and beyond, so the library works as a set of free Turkish graded readers: start at the level where you understand most of a page, and move up when the English beside it is something you check only now and then.

Want a book that isn’t here? Make your own Turkish–English parallel text from any EPUB or PDF: free preview, and 50 free pages when you sign up.

Reading Turkish with English alongside

Turkish is easier to read than its reputation suggests. It uses the Latin alphabet, is spelled almost exactly as it sounds, and its grammar is very regular, with few exceptions to learn.

The challenge is that almost nothing else is familiar. Words are built by adding suffix after suffix to a root, and sentences run in a different order from English, with the verb at the end. With the English next to each paragraph, you can see how a long word or sentence was meant and start to recognise the pieces it is made from.

Reading English books with Turkish alongside

For Turkish speakers, a parallel text is a way into books in English without reaching for a dictionary every few lines. Read the English and look across to the Turkish when a phrasal verb, an idiom or a long sentence doesn’t land.

It works for bilingual families too: one book, two languages on the same page, so a parent and a child can each follow in the language they read best.

Where a parallel text helps most in Turkish

Words built from suffixes

A single Turkish word such as evlerimizden (from our houses) can hold what English says in a whole phrase. Seeing it beside its English teaches you to take it apart, suffix by suffix.

The verb at the end

Turkish puts the verb last, and relative clauses come before the noun they describe, so a sentence often reads back to front for an English reader. Pairing by paragraph keeps the whole thought on screen while the order becomes familiar.

Vowel harmony

Endings change their vowels to match the word they attach to, so the same suffix appears as -ler or -lar, -de or -da. Beside the translation, these variants soon read as one and the same.

Turkish classics to read in parallel

Long out of copyright and easy to find as EPUBs. Any of them makes a good first Turkish–English parallel text:

  • Aşk-ı Memnu, Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil
  • Kürk Mantolu Madonna, Sabahattin Ali
  • İntibah, Namık Kemal
  • Kaşağı, Ömer Seyfettin

Or use a book you already own: the method works best with something you actually want to read. See how to read a parallel text to get the most from it.