Lesson 17 — Tatile gideceğiz! We’re off on holiday

1Yarın geleceğim: the future tense

Until now you’ve talked about tomorrow in the present tense: Yarın geliyorum — which is fine; Lesson 6 said so. But Turkish has a future of its own, and with it you can promise, predict and make up your mind: “I’ll come”, “it’s going to rain”, “I’m going to İzmir”. It’s put together the way all your tenses are: the stem, the tense, the person.

The tense ending is -acak or -ecek. Two teams, like -lar/-ler: gel — gelecek, al — alacak. After a vowel the familiar glue letter y steps in: oku — okuyacak, bekle — bekleyecek. Then the person, with the same endings as -yor. One small catch: for “I” and “we” the ending starts with a vowel, and the k in front of it softens to ğ — just like çocuk → çocuğu in Lesson 7. Hence geleceğim and geleceğiz.

The stubborn verbs are stubborn here too, and in the old way. Gitmek’s t turns into a d again, as in gidiyorum: gideceğim. So do etmek — edecek — and Lesson 15’s tatmak — tadacak. And yemek and demek, which gave you yiyorum and diyorum with -yor, give you yiyeceğim and diyeceğim here.

Now the words that go with the future. You know yarın; the day after tomorrow is öbür gün. And “next week” is gelecek hafta — gelecek literally means “the one that will come”. Remember Lesson 13’s geçen hafta, “the one that went by”? The past goes, the future comes, and Turkish says exactly that. “In two days” you already have, with Lesson 6’s sonra: iki gün sonra.

By the way, you’ve met this ending before — on Lesson 15’s menu. İçecekler, “drinks”, is literally “things that will be drunk”. And yiyecek is “food”: “what will be eaten”. Turkish makes whole words out of the future.

So which one for plans, -yor or -acak? Both work. Yarın geliyorum sounds as if it’s all arranged. Yarın geleceğim sounds like a decision, or a promise. That’s why “I promise” — Söz! — is usually followed by the future. And a forecast — the weather, somebody else’s plans, how things will turn out — takes -acak only.

One last thing, for your ears. In real speech the future gets squashed: geleceğim comes out nearly as gelicem, yapacağım as yapıcam. Recognise it when you hear it; write it out in full.

2Gelmeyeceğim. Gelecek misin?

The negative follows the first rule of Lesson 16: straight after the stem, before everything else. -ma/-me, and since the future starts with a vowel, a y steps in between: gel-me-y-ecek.

And the question follows the second rule: where mi goes. The future behaves like -yor: mi stands on its own and takes the person with it — gelecek misin? Only “they” still keep -lar on the verb: gelecekler mi? So that’s three tenses and two seating plans: -yor and -acak put mi before the person, -dı after it.

You answer the way you did in the past, with the verb itself: Gelecek misin? — Geleceğim. Or Hayır, gelmeyeceğim. You can skip the “yes”: the verb says it for you.

3Her şey güzel olacak: the future without a verb

In Lesson 13 the past glued itself straight on to a word: hastaydım, evdeydim. The future can’t do that — it needs a helper, olmak, “to be, to become”, also from Lesson 13. Put it in the future and you’re done: “I’ll be at home”, “it’ll be warm”, “I’m going to be a doctor”.

Var and yok go the same way. “There’ll be” is olacak; “there won’t be” is olmayacak.

And Her şey güzel olacak — “everything’s going to be fine” — is what you tell a friend when things aren’t going well. Now you understand every word of it.

4Tatil: holidays

You’ve known tatil since Lesson 7 — İyi tatiller! Now, with the future, you can plan one. Tatil covers school holidays, a holiday from work and a day off. İzin is what your boss gives you: time off work — and, while we’re at it, permission of any kind.

At the sea. Look how Turkish goes for a swim: denize girmek, literally “to go into the sea” — Lesson 14’s girmek. Yüzmek is actually swimming. You can go into the sea without swimming a single stroke.

It can’t all be lying on the beach. Gezmek — “to go round, to see the sights” — is what you do when you travel and look around: a town, a museum, old streets.

And the weather — every holiday’s big forecast, so it’s the future. “Sunny” is güneşli, with Lesson 12’s -lı. And rain in Turkish “rains rain”: yağmur yağıyor. Serin means “cool” — a word that sounds like a compliment in a Turkish summer.

5Kuş gibi, senin kadar: comparing

In Lesson 11 you compared things with daha and -dan: Murat Elif’ten daha uzun. Today, two more ways. Gibi means “like”: the same kind, the same way. Kadar means “as … as”: the same amount, to the same degree. Gibi compares what something is like; kadar, how much of it there is.

And you already know kadar twice over, as it happens. Ne kadar? — “how much?” from Lesson 10 — and akşama kadar, “until the evening”, from Lesson 11. It’s the same word every time, and it always does one job: it measures. How much, how far, how very.

A noun in front of gibi or kadar stays just as it is.

That last one is Ayşe Can’dan daha dakik seen from the other side: you can tell the same truth with daha or with kadar.

Pronouns, though, go into Lesson 7’s genitive in front of gibi and kadar: benim gibi, senin kadar. All except “they” — onlar gibi. And gibi, like any word, takes a person ending: gibisin, “you’re like…”.

The first two are the whole difference in a nutshell. Benim gibi — the way I do. Benim kadar — as much as I do. You can love tea “like me”, and drink it “as much as me”.

A few more handy ones. Bu kadar is “this much, that’s it”: Bu kadar mı? — “Is that all?” Gibi after a list means “such as”: Çeşme, Ayvalık gibi yerler — “places such as Çeşme and Ayvalık”. And a couple of ready-made comparisons. Kuş kadar yiyor — “she eats like a bird” — although Turkish says “as much as”, not “like”: it’s measuring the portion. Dünya kadar is “as much as the world”, which is to say, tons.

7Dialogue: a suitcase the size of Can

Friday evening. Early tomorrow morning Ayşe and Can are off to the sea for the weekend. Ayşe knocks on Can’s door to check he’s ready. He is. Rather too ready.

Lazım means “needed, handy”: lazım olacak, “it’ll come in useful”. Farklı is “different”. Hafif is “light”. Mayo is a swimsuit or trunks, depending on who’s going. And saat gibi, “like a clock”, is Turkish for “like clockwork”: to the minute. Can, as we know from Lesson 11, believes he’s the most punctual person alive.

8Reading

The summer holidays. Since Lesson 11 the plate — the stairs’ plate, that one — has been staying in İzmir with anneanne Nermin. Back then Sevim teyze promised Deniz it would come back full. And in Lesson 16 Efe refused to give it a mark until it did. It looks as though the wait is over.

Hepiniz is “all of you” — like Lesson 10’s hepsi, only “all of you”. Yuvarlak is “round”. Merdivenin! — “the stairs’!”: back in Lesson 7 the plate was handed over to the staircase. And the last line has a secret. Deniz also means “sea” in Turkish (Lesson 9), and -sız is “without” (Lesson 12), so Denizsiz tatil olmaz says two things at once: “it’s no holiday without Deniz” and “there’s no holiday without the sea”. Anneanne Nermin is from İzmir — she knows what she’s talking about.

9The lesson’s new words

Everything new from today, in the order it turned up. The future forms aren’t here — you build those yourself. Nor is kadar: it’s already filed under Lesson 11; today it just got more work to do.

10Say it yourself

Say it out loud first, then check. Got it wrong? Good — that’s how it sticks. Peeking first just robs you of the useful part.

11Check yourself

Six items. A miss shows you the right answer — so getting it wrong here is useful too.

12Homework

All of it out loud. The future settles in fastest when you use it about your own life.