Lesson 22 — Gitmem lazım! I’ve got to go

1Beklemek zor: an action as the subject

Since Lesson 4 the -mak/-mek form has hung in the dictionary as a label, and in Lesson 7 it got its first job: Gitmek istiyorum, “I want to go”. Today it gets promoted. It turns into a noun — a proper one, with all the rights: it can be the subject of a sentence, take cases, even take “my” and “your”. It’s the step to the long sentences real life can’t do without: “I’ve got to go”, “I want you to come”, “I’m sick of waiting”. All of them, today.

Start with the simplest. The action is the subject, and the end of the sentence says what you think of it: hard, easy, lovely. English does this with “-ing” or with “it’s … to”: “waiting is hard”, “it’s hard to wait”. Turkish just puts the -mak form first and the verdict last.

And every day you’ll need it for rules. You’ve known lazım, “needed”, since Lesson 17. It has a twin, gerek, that means the same: lazım, TDK’s dictionary says, came from Arabic, while gerek is Turkish’s own. And a third word: yasak, “forbidden”. Put an action in front of them and you’ve got a rule for everyone at once, and nobody in particular.

Gerek can be a verb as well, gerekmek: gerekiyor is the same “you need to”, only it sounds more like talk. And if the rule is not to do something, the negative goes inside, as in Lesson 4: gelmemek, “not coming”.

2Gitmem lazım: I need to

In Lesson 17 lazım only ever came after a noun: Tatilde her şey lazım olacak, “everything comes in handy on holiday”. In Lesson 20 Sevim teyze said Bu kediye bir ad lazım, “this cat needs a name”. And “I need to go” we put off until today. Here’s why: the rules up there had nobody in them. “You have to stop on red” — who does? Everyone. What if it’s me who has to?

Then the -mak drops its k, leaving -ma or -me, and Lesson 7’s “my”, “your” sticks on the end. What you get is something like “my going”: gitmem. Gitmem lazım — “my going is needed” — is “I need to go”, “I’ve got to go”.

The -ma always ends in a vowel, so the endings are the ones Lesson 7 used after a vowel, as on araba: arabam, araban, arabası. And so for any verb:

The ending already says who. But you can name them outright too — in the genitive, like the owner in Lesson 7’s Ayşe’nin arabası. Benim gitmem lazım is “I’m the one who needs to go”, with some weight on the I; usually gitmem is enough.

“Mustn’t” puts the negative inside: gitmemem lazım, “I mustn’t go”. Two me’s in a row, each doing its own job. A question puts mı after lazım: Gitmem lazım mı? And the past is -dı on lazım, as on the nouns in Lesson 13: lazımdı. Or the verb gerekmek itself in the past: gerekti.

And one trap. Gelmem is also last lesson’s “I won’t come”, the aorist’s no. Same letters, different meaning. What sorts it out is the company it keeps: gelmem lazım is “I need to come”, while Gelmem. on its own at the end is “I won’t come”. Your ear gets used to it quickly.

3Beklemekten sıkıldım: -maktan and -makta

Now the cases. There’s one rule, and you know it already: a verb asks for its own case, and an action gets it just like any other noun. Lesson 5’s korkmak and hoşlanmak ask for -dan: denizden korkuyor, “she’s scared of the sea”. What if she’s scared not of the sea but of going in? The -dan sits straight on the -mak, and the k stays put: -maktan.

A new verb of the same kind: sıkılmak, “to get bored”, “to be fed up”. It takes -dan too, and with it you can say one of the most useful sentences on any journey:

If the action is somebody’s, first comes the “my”, “his”, then the case — with Lesson 7’s n in between, as in arabasından: -masından. Remember Can up the tree last lesson?

The locative -da plays the same trick: the k stays, -makta. Its favourite outing is with fayda var, “there’s some good in it”, “it’s worth it”. Sormakta fayda var: “no harm in asking”, literally “there’s good in the asking”. A handy phrase for anyone learning a language.

And one warning: -maktan is not -madan. They sound alike, but -madan means “without doing”, a different suffix altogether, and it belongs to Lesson 24.

4Gitmeye karar verdim: -maya

The dative -a is more interesting: the k leaves before it. Not gitmeka but gitmeye. What’s left is -me, and like any word ending in a vowel it calls in Lesson 16’s y: -meye, -maya. With somebody’s action it’s -masına, with the n again.

Which verbs ask for it? The ones that answer “to what?”. Lesson 4’s başlamak, “to start”: Yağmur yağmaya başladı, “it started raining” — “the rain started falling”. Lesson 20’s karar vermek, “to decide”: in Turkish you decide *towards* something. And two new ones: alışmak, “to get used to” — used to what? — and izin vermek, “to allow”, “to give permission for”.

And Lesson 4’s çalışmak picks up a third meaning with the dative. It was already “to work” and “to study”; with -maya it’s “to try”. Türkçe konuşmaya çalışıyorum, “I’m trying to speak Turkish” — which, by the way, is exactly what you’re doing.

And the polite “no need”: gerek yok. The short one is just Gerek yok! And if there’s no need to do something, the action goes in the dative: Gelmene gerek yok, “you don’t need to come”.

And now a present from Lesson 11. Remember dörde beş var, “five to four” — literally “to four there are five”? The same pattern works with any action: how long there is until it happens. A countdown to anything you like.

5Gelmeni istiyorum: -mayı and istemek

That leaves Lesson 14’s accusative -ı, the “what?” case. Here too the k goes and the y comes: -mayı, -meyi. And sevmek, remember, wants the accusative even when you mean things in general — so “I love swimming” is yüzmeyi seviyorum.

Two turns of phrase to use straight away. -mayı bilmek is “to know how to”. And -mayı düşünmek is “to be thinking of doing”.

And now the part that makes this lesson worth it. In Lesson 7 you said Gitmek istiyorum, “I want to go”. There the one who wants and the one who goes are the same person, so the -mak stands bare. But what if I’m the one who wants, and you’re the one who has to go? English needs “I want you to go”. Turkish needs one word: gitmeni istiyorum, “I want your going”. The action takes “your” and the accusative — with the n in front of it in the third person: gitmesini.

Beklemek works the same way: “I’m waiting for you to come” is, in Turkish, “I’m waiting for your coming”.

Now and then you’ll hear -mayı istiyorum about someone’s own wish too — especially when a word like çok has squeezed in between: Bunu yapmayı çok istiyorum. Don’t let it throw you; that’s fine too. For your own wishes, just keep to Lesson 7’s -mak istiyorum.

And all together. The k only survives before a t: -maktan, -makta. Before a vowel, -a and -ı, it goes and the y comes: -maya, -mayı. And with “my”, “your”, there’s no k anywhere.

6Dondurma, bekleme salonu: -ma as a name

One last thing. -ma isn’t only “my going” for one sentence: lots of these words have become ordinary nouns, with a dictionary entry of their own. You’ve been eating one since Lesson 15: dondurma. Dondurmak is “to freeze”, and TDK’s dictionary gives that as the word’s first meaning — dondurma, “freezing”. Ice cream, in Turkish, is just “the freezing”.

Dolma comes from the same verb as Lesson 11’s dolmuş. Dolmuş is “filled up”: the minibus goes when it’s full. Dolma is “the filling”: a pepper or a vine leaf with rice inside.

And -ma is happy to be the first word in a Lesson 8 pair — the “what kind?” izafet. What kind of hall? One for waiting: bekleme salonu, the waiting room. Half the signs at any station are built this way.

Dinlenmek is Lesson 12’s “to rest”, tesis a facility, and together they’re the place on the highway where the intercity bus pulls in. Which is exactly where we’re heading next.

8Dialogue: wait or walk?

Friday. Can’s jug from last lesson — or cup; the jury’s still out — is ready, and Ayşe and Can are off to the workshop to fetch it. A bus stop, an app on the phone, twelve minutes till the bus. For Can, that’s forever.

Uygulama is an app — section 6’s -ma again. Durak is a stop, from durmak, “to stand”. Yürümek is “to walk”. Kaçırmak is “to miss”: otobüsü kaçırdık, “we missed the bus”. Now count how much of today is in one line of Ayşe’s: Beklemeyi öğrenmen lazım — -mayı, -man and lazım. And notice the conclusion Can draws: güzelmiş, with Lesson 18’s -mış — “turns out it’s nice”. He may have learned the wrong lesson.

9Reading

Last lesson Efe’s family went off to anneanne Nermin’s in İzmir for a week, and Deniz stayed behind — work — with a promise to Efe: Belki gelecek hafta gelirim, “Maybe I’ll come next week.” The aorist, the soft future: maybe I will, maybe I won’t. And Kurabiye still sleeps on his doormat.

Cam kenarı is the window seat: cam “glass”, kenar “edge”, as in deniz kenarı. Eksik is “missing”, “short”: bir yolcu eksik, “we’re one passenger short”. Sözünü tutmak is “to keep your word”. And sürpriz is exactly what it looks like. As for the last line, it’s for anyone who remembers Lesson 9: deniz means “sea”. Asking Deniz if he can swim is like asking the sea.

10The lesson’s new words

Everything new from today, in the order it turned up. The -mak and -ma forms you build yourself, so they’re not here — except the ones that have become words of their own. Sürpriz looks just like “surprise”, so it’s left out too; take the -tır from the law, and sürmek meaning “to drive”, as they come.

11Say it yourself

Out loud first, then check. Got it wrong? Good — that’s how it sticks. Peeking first just gives away the useful part.

12Check yourself

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

13Homework

All of it out loud. Today’s lesson is about jobs, wishes and rules, and everyone has plenty of those.