Turkish — Travel
The verb that decides a Turkish question does not arrive until the question is nearly over.
Turkish holds the deciding word back. Whether the shopkeeper is telling you it is shut, asking whether you want two, or offering to walk you there, you find out at the end of his sentence — by which point he has begun the next one. Then it is your turn, and your own ending has to be worked out before you start.
Exchanges that last one turn, until the day they last three.
Getting off the dolmuş
Shared minibuses have no fixed stops. You pass your fare forward over strangers' shoulders, and you have to say müsait bir yerde inebilir miyim loudly enough and early enough, while the driver is already past the turning.
The price is an opening
In a carpet shop or a bazaar the first number is an opening, tea is part of the negotiation, and walking towards the door is a move rather than an ending. You need to counter, hesitate and decline without closing the conversation.
The nöbetçi eczane
After hours each district keeps one pharmacy open, and in Turkey the pharmacist is the person you talk to rather than a doctor. You have to produce the verb — ağrıyor, kaşınıyor, şişti — with the right possessive on the body part, to somebody who then decides what you are handed.
Refusing twice before you accept
An offer of tea, a chair, a lift or half of somebody's lunch is made, turned down, and made again. The first refusal is a formality, the second has to sound unlike the first, and a third one is a small insult.
The aorist doing the present tense
In Northern Cyprus giderim does the work of gidiyorum, and the question particle mI often vanishes into intonation, so a question and a statement can differ only in the tune. Black Sea and south-eastern speech will move the endings around on you too.
Pointing at the trays
In an esnaf lokantası you order by looking. Naming the dish, asking what is in it, and requesting half a portion or no chilli takes far more Turkish than the pointing does, and the compound endings on dish names are where it goes wrong.
The bits of travel Turkish that fail under real conditions.
A phrase you have rehearsed survives its first outing. The second turn is where it goes: half the endings swallowed, the verb past before you have caught up, and no gap in which to reassemble. So the same question comes at you again, faster.
- Time told the Turkish way — saat üçe çeyrek var, buçuk, çeyrek — where the hour you need turns up before the word that adjusts it.
- The dative and ablative that public transport runs on: Kadıköy'e, otogardan, kaça, nerede inmem gerekiyor.
- Starting a word over when the harmony has already gone wrong, rather than piling the remaining suffixes on top of the mistake.
- Formulas that oblige a reply — kolay gelsin, eline sağlık, geçmiş olsun, afiyet olsun — and what you are meant to say back.
- Fast speech where geliyorum comes out geliyom and gideceğim comes out gidicem, and answering it without asking for a repeat.
- Hearing the switch to sen in the verb ending rather than in a pronoun, because the pronoun is usually not said at all.
Start with ten minutes
Nothing to book, and a written report at the end of the first session.
Try 10 minutes freeOne voice, and no crowd
Sessions cannot reproduce a bus station at rush hour, a shopkeeper with a Gaziantep accent, or a market at full volume, and no set of phrases covers every counter you end up standing at. The second and third turn of a conversation is what comes out of this. The first turn was never the hard one.