Turkish is one of the major languages in the world spoken by hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Asia. It is the official language of Turkey. Although many people study Turkish either in Turkey or abroad today, there is not a dictionary especially compiled for learners of Turkish as a foreign language. This dictionary has been produced to meet such a need. Therefore, it is more of a learners’ dictionary whose primary aim is to help students of Turkish who not only try to understand but also produce the language.

Turkish is a rich language with more than a hundred thousand words. Learners’ dictionaries are not expected to cover all the words for practical reasons because ordinary people or the educated for that matter normally use no more than a few thousand words. This dictionary covers most frequently used 4456 words. A clarifying sample Turkish sentence is provided together with its English translation for each meaning. These sample sentences are invaluable in that they help the learner to see the syntactic properties of words in addition to their denotations.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, a significant mystery for researchers in fields such as archaeology, history, linguistics, and theology began to unravel with the discovery of Manichean written records in Central Asia and Upper Egypt. While Manichean texts were composed in various languages, the largest body of religious writings was primarily in Middle Iranian languages. Following Bögü Kagan’s conversion, many of these texts in Central Asia were translated into Old Uyghur, predominantly from Middle Iranian sources. This study explores the origins of the Manichean script and provides a comparative analysis of its development and paleographic characteristics across Parthian, Middle Persian, Sogdian, and Old Uyghur. Additionally, evaluations of certain paleographic features in the Manichean script have been incorporated into the study.