Lesson 24 — Isınmadan koşma! Warm up first

1Futbol oynamak, spor yapmak: which sport takes which verb

In Lesson 4 you played backgammon in the tea garden: tavla oynamak. In Lesson 18 Can watched football at Emre’s and came home without a voice. Today it’s the rest of sport. You’ll know the word itself at once: spor, from French. And “to do sport, to exercise” is spor yapmak — literally “to do sport”.

The verb is what matters here. Ball games, like backgammon, take oynamak, “to play”. You’ll know their names without a dictionary. And chess, satranç, counts as sport too — that’s not just chess players talking: TDK’s dictionary says a contest can be of the mind as well as the body.

Most of the rest take yapmak: spor yapmak, yoga yapmak, kayak yapmak. Careful with kayak: it isn’t a boat at all. It’s skis — and skiing.

And some sports are verbs in their own right. You know yüzmek from Lesson 17 and koşmak from Lesson 19, and güreşmek is “to wrestle”. The sport itself is yüzme, swimming; koşu, running; güreş, wrestling. You go out for a run the way you went out for last lesson’s walk: koşuya çıkmak. And a bike you get on, like a bus: bisiklete binmek.

Try these yourself first, then check:

2Hangi takımı tutuyorsun? Teams, matches and referees

Sooner or later, someone in Türkiye will ask you: Hangi takımı tutuyorsun?, “which team do you support?” A takım is a team. And you’ve met tutmak before: in Lesson 18 it made a wish, dilek tutmak; in Lesson 22 it kept a promise, sözünü tutmak. Now it holds a team — TDK’s dictionary puts it as “to back someone, to be on their side”.

Next, the words of a match. In Lesson 13 an oyuncu was an actor; on the pitch it’s a player — someone who plays, oyun plus -⁠cu. A saha is a pitch or a court. The hakem is the referee, and he has a düdük, a whistle. You “ring” a whistle, like a phone: düdük çalmak — and the k softens, as in Lesson 7: düdüğü.

You throw a ball, atmak, and you “throw” a goal too: gol atmak, to score. You’ve known kazanmak, “to win”, since Lesson 4, and berabere, “a draw”, since Lesson 16. All that was missing was kaybetmek, “to lose” — a match, and your keys.

A kupa, says TDK, is both a big mug and a cup you win. You drink from both — from the second, admittedly, only after a win. Before a game you ısınmak, “warm up”: the same verb as for the weather getting warmer. Antrenman is training, a spor salonu is a gym (you saw salon at Lesson 13’s cinema), and a taraftar is a fan.

3Beklemeyip yürüdük: didn’t — and did something else

In Lesson 19 you glued actions together with -⁠(y)ıp: Kapıyı açıp baktım, “I opened the door and looked.” -⁠ıp has no person or tense of its own; the last verb supplies them. Back then we promised its negative for Lesson 24. Here it is — two of them, in fact, and they don’t mean the same thing.

The first is -⁠ıp’s mirror image: the negative -⁠ma, then Lesson 16’s y, then ıp. Just two forms, as with -⁠ma itself: -⁠mayıp and -⁠meyip. It means “didn’t do this, did that” — most often, “instead”.

The first example should ring a bell: in Lesson 22 that’s exactly what Ayşe and Can did — they wouldn’t wait twelve minutes, so they walked. The bus, you’ll remember, overtook them on the way.

Person and tense, as with -⁠ıp, come from the last verb: yürüdük makes it “we”, in the past; oturalım makes it “let’s”. And to be honest, in conversation people often say the same thing with two verbs: Beklemedik, yürüdük. But you’ll keep meeting -⁠mayıp, so it’s worth knowing when you see it.

4Bakmadan geçme! -⁠madan, “without”

The second negative you’ll hear every day: -⁠madan, -⁠meden, “without doing”. One action, and what it went ahead without. Any parent at any crossing will say it: Bakmadan geçme!, “don’t cross without looking!”

So how is it different from -⁠mayıp? -⁠mayıp is two actions: one didn’t happen, the other did. -⁠madan is one action, and what was missing from it.

And the trap we left here back in Lesson 22. Beklemekten sıkıldım, “I’m fed up with waiting”: -⁠maktan, with a k, the ablative of -⁠mak. Beklemeden girdim, “I went in without waiting”: -⁠madan, no k. One letter, and a whole different meaning. Say both out loud a couple of times.

And -⁠madan often means “before” as well. Over a glass of tea you’re bound to hear it:

Word for word: “tea not having cooled, drink”. Not cooled yet means before it cools. Turkish is so fond of this “before” that it has a whole construction for it. That’s next.

5Maç başlamadan önce, maç bittikten sonra: before and after

In Lesson 6, önce and sonra came after a noun with -⁠dan: yemekten önce, “before the meal”; dersten sonra, “after the lesson”. But what about before or after an action — “before eating”, “after I got home”? That’s where it turns out önce and sonra want different things from a verb.

Önce takes our -⁠madan: yemeden önce, “before eating”. It sounds odd — “not having eaten, before” — but the logic is watertight: as long as you haven’t eaten yet, it’s before the meal.

And sonra takes a form you could say you know already. Remember Lesson 13’s past tense — geldik, “we came”? Add -⁠ten, then sonra: geldikten sonra, “after coming”. There’s no “we” in it; the form just looks the same.

It changes just as geldik does: four vowels, and the d turns into t after the hard consonants of Fıstıkçı Şahap. And after the k, the -⁠tan always has a t.

Who and when come from the last verb, as with -⁠ıp. And if different people are doing things, you just name the first one at the start. No genitive, unlike Lesson 22’s Deniz’in gelmesi: Deniz gelmeden önce, and that’s it.

And, as in Lesson 6 (dersten on dakika önce), you can say how much before or after, right in between:

In Lesson 16 Can mixed up önce and sonra: “Sonra ‘önce’ dedim!” With verbs they’re harder to mix up — each has its own form. And one last form, worth recognising even if you won’t say it yet. -⁠madıktan sonra looks like “after not doing”, and means “if you don’t…, then what’s the point”:

7Dialogue: the match first, then the phone

Yesterday at eight Can had his second interview — and he made it: Ayşe rang him at six and at half past, as promised. They told him, “We’ll call you.” He hasn’t let go of his phone since, and as you’ll remember from Lesson 22, waiting is not his strong point. Ayşe is taking him to the basketball court in the park.

Kaç kaç? is how you ask the score — literally “how many, how many?”. Basket! is a basket scored. Futbolcu is a footballer: futbol with Lesson 10’s -⁠cu. Kaçmak is “to run away”, and Lesson 22’s kaçırmak, “to miss”, is “to let it run away”. Bakmak yok is “no looking” — literally “there’s no looking”. Kimmiş? and Emre’ymiş are Lesson 18’s -⁠mış: Ayşe didn’t hear the call, and Can only found out who it was when he picked up. Ses yok, “not a sound”, means no news. Now count the -⁠madans in one match: bakmadan, çalmadan, ısınmadan, başlamadan önce, düşünmeden, bitmeden. Can lost the match, but he learned the lesson.

8Reading

Deniz is still in İzmir at anneanne Nermin’s with Efe’s family — he came on the night bus in Lesson 22. But the holiday’s nearly over: he’s back at work tomorrow. And at home Kurabiye is still sleeping on his doormat outside Sevim teyze’s door.

Spor ayakkabısı are trainers — “sport shoes”. Yorulmak is “to get tired”, a cousin of Lesson 12’s yorgun. Harcamak is “to spend, to waste”. Yürüyüşteydiler: they were out on last lesson’s yürüyüş. A bank isn’t a bank — it’s a bench; the kind with money is a banka. A gevrekçi sells gevrek, with Lesson 10’s -⁠çi. Uykudaydı is Lesson 12’s uyku, “sleep”, with -⁠daydı: “was in sleep”. Uyandırmak is “to wake someone up”: Lesson 22’s uyanmak, “to wake up”, with a piece that means “make”. Kaldırmak, “to lift”, works the same way — kalkmak, “to get up”, made to happen. Deniz made the doormat get up; Kurabiye didn’t. And the last line: Kurabiye came down without coming down — inmeden indi.

9The lesson’s new words

Everything new from today, in the order it turned up. Words you’ll know on sight — basketbol, voleybol, tenis, yoga, sultan, pijama — are left out, and you can build yüzme, futbolcu and gevrekçi yourself. As for -⁠madan, -⁠mayıp and -⁠dıktan sonra, they aren’t words but tools: they work with any verb.

This lesson’s words as flashcards →

10Say it yourself

Say it out loud first, then open the answer. Got it wrong? Good — that’s how it sticks. Peeking first is like warming up on the bench.

11Check yourself

Six items. A miss shows you the right answer straight away, so getting it wrong here isn’t a loss — it’s practice.

12Homework

All of it out loud. And don’t forget to warm up before you start.