Lesson 26 — So you’re one of our friends

1A sentence in one word

Let’s start the course’s last lesson with a single word. A long one: arkadaşlarımızdanmışsınız. Don’t panic — you already know it. Not in one piece, but bit by bit, and every bit comes from a lesson you’ve done.

Build it yourself, one piece at a time. Say each line out loud — you can feel the word grow:

That’s Turkish’s big secret, all of it. Linguists give it a fearsome name — agglutination — which only means “gluing on”, from Latin. English says “you’re one of our friends, it turns out” in eight separate words. Turkish never changes the word itself; it glues pieces on. Each piece carries one meaning and has its own place in the queue, and Turkish calls such a piece an ek, “an addition”. As TDK’s dictionary puts it, an ek means nothing on its own until it’s stuck to a word.

The queue isn’t random. In Lesson 16 you had the train evlerimizde — first “many”, then “whose”, then the case. Today two more carriages have coupled on: Lesson 18’s -⁠mış, “it turns out”, and right at the back, who — Lesson 1’s -⁠sınız. For twenty-five lessons you’ve been collecting these eks one by one. And here’s what Ayşe and Can would say to you today:

2One verb, another dozen jobs

In Lesson 16, halfway along, we took one verb — gelmek, “to come” — through every form you had then. There were a dozen. Since then gel- has grown so many new tails that it’s time for a recount. Here’s the second dozen, lesson by lesson:

Lesson 16’s rules still hold; not one has broken. The stem comes first, the negative straight after it, whatever follows: gelmeyecek, gelmemiş, gelmez, gelmemesi, gelmeden. And mi still sits in one of two places: in four tenses before the person — geliyor musun, gelecek misin, gelmiş misin, gelir misin — and only with -⁠dı after it: geldin mi. Five tenses, two seats, just as Lesson 21 promised.

3Geliyorum, geleceğim or gelirim?

In English, “I’ll come tomorrow” — that’s it. In Turkish, “tomorrow” has three tenses to choose from, and each one says something about you. -⁠yor is a done deal, already arranged: the ticket’s bought, they’re expecting you (Lesson 6). -⁠acak is a decision or a promise, a firm one (Lesson 17). And -⁠ır, the aorist, is the soft one: I could, I’m willing, probably (Lesson 21).

That same softness makes -⁠ır the best way to volunteer: Ben yaparım!, “I’ll do it!”, Merak etme, ben açarım. Say yapacağım and it sounds like an oath.

And two traps everyone falls into. First: the negative -⁠ır means “not, as a rule”, not “not right now”. Ben kahve içmem is “I don’t drink coffee” — that’s who I am; Bugün kahve içmiyorum is “I’m not having coffee today”. Second, from Lesson 22: gelmem on its own is “I won’t come!”, but with lazım it’s “I need to come”. The very same letters, the opposite meaning.

4Geldi or gelmiş? Seen or heard

About the past, Turkish always asks one question: were you there? You saw it yourself — -⁠dı. You found out, heard it, worked it out from the traces — -⁠mış. Practise on the postman: either you opened the door to him, or you found a letter under it.

And when you pass on what someone else told you, their -⁠dı becomes your -⁠mış — Lesson 19’s rule. Deniz saw it himself; you didn’t:

That’s why fairy tales are told in -⁠mış — Bir varmış, bir yokmuş — and why jokes are too: nobody telling them was there. Here’s how the story waiting for you in “Türkiye up close” begins. A göl is a lake, a hoca a teacher:

5Gitmek or gitmen? Who does it

Since Lesson 22 your verbs have worked as nouns, and from then on, three lessons running, one question decided everything: who’s doing it? If it’s the same person as the speaker — bare -⁠mak. If it’s someone else — -⁠ma with their possessive ending: “my going”, “your going”. Here’s one pair taken through all three lessons:

Notice? Gitmem lazım is “I need to”, though I’m the one talking. With lazım and gerek, bare -⁠mak is a rule for everyone: Geç kalmamak lazım, “nobody should be late”. The possessive is what says who exactly needs to. And strictest of all is last lesson’s üzere: one person only — you can’t say “so that you” with it.

And don’t mix up -⁠ma with Lesson 23’s -⁠ış. -⁠ma is the action itself, inside a sentence, and any verb can make one. -⁠ış is a word for one go of it, or a way of doing it: a walk, a look, a smile.

6Two actions, one sentence

Four endings that glue two actions into one sentence. None of them has a person or a tense of its own: the last verb lends them both. Say each one aloud — and listen for who, and when.

Two traps here. Önce wants -⁠madan, and sonra wants -⁠dıktan: gelmeden önce, geldikten sonra, and no other way round. And -⁠madan is easy to confuse with Lesson 22’s -⁠maktan — one k tells them apart:

7The small words that hold it together

The second half of the course handed you a whole fistful of little words: gibi and kadar (Lesson 17), göre (18), diye (19), hem … hem and ne … ne (21), için, çünkü, bu yüzden, yüzünden and sayesinde (25). We won’t go over their rules again — let’s see whether they work for you. Translate them yourself, then check:

9Dialogue: the call

Since his second interview Can has been waiting for the company to ring — last lesson he posted his parcel to İzmir partly so as not to wait. It’s Saturday, and he and Ayşe are at the tea garden. Before the interview Ayşe gave him three pieces of advice, remember? Keep it short, don’t be late — and not a word about football.

The sekreter passes on the manager’s words, as in Lesson 23: aramamı söyledi, teşekkür etmemi söyledi. An aday is a candidate, also from Lesson 23. Maalesef, “I’m afraid”, is Lesson 6’s polite way to say no. Aramızda kalsın is “let it stay between us”: Lesson 9’s ara, “the space between”, with -⁠ımız and kalsın. Başvurmak, “to apply for a job”, is from Lesson 23 too. And now listen to Can: the secretary said verdik, “we gave”, and he passes it on to Ayşe as vermişler. He wasn’t there when they decided — Lesson 19’s rule works even on a bad day. Benim yüzümden and senin sayesinde are last lesson’s pair: because of the bad, thanks to the good.

10Reading

The course’s last Reading. It’s Sunday — the one Efe wrote about from İzmir last lesson. The family is coming home, and Can’s flowerpot with them. Sevim teyze promised to buy a flower for it. And since yesterday, Can has had some news.

You know ekmek as “bread”, but it has a namesake — a verb, “to sow, to plant”: Kurabiye ekiyorum. Toprak is soil, from Lesson 21, where they made pots out of it. İstifa etmek is to resign, as Efe did in Lesson 23. Bıyık is a moustache — and a cat’s whiskers. And the course’s last line answers the last line of Lesson 1’s story. There Deniz said: Ben çok mutluyum ve çok tokum! Twenty-five lessons later Kurabiye says the same thing — only silently, and in the past tense.

11The lesson’s new words

A review lesson, so there aren’t many new words, and nearly all of them came from the Hoca’s stories and Can’s phone call. You know sekreter, aday and başvurmak from Lesson 23, and toprak from Lesson 21. Parayı veren düdüğü çalar rests on an ending you haven’t had yet — for now, just admire it.

This lesson’s words as flashcards →

12Say it yourself

One last time in this course: out loud first, then the answer. Each one comes from a different lesson, so if one won’t come, you know where to go back to. Getting it wrong here isn’t failing — it’s the most useful thing you can do with this block.

13Check yourself

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

14Homework

The last homework of Course 1. All of it out loud: the ear remembers better than the eye, as you know by now. And when you’re done, Course 2 picks up right where you stopped.