Lesson 7 — Kendimi bildim bileli… Since when, and for how long

1üç yıldır: for how long

English says “I’ve lived here for three years”: the present perfect, and “for”. Turkish stays in the present — -⁠yor, or the person ending of buradayım — and puts -⁠dır on the stretch of time itself: üç yıldır, “for three years”.

It looks like the -⁠dır of signs in Course 1’s Lesson 23 — Müze pazartesi günleri kapalıdır — and it changes the same way: four vowels, and after the hard consonants of Fıstıkçı Şahap the d turns into a t. Here it sits on a stretch of time and says how long something has been going on:

The negative and the question stay where they always are, in the verb. “How long?” is Kaç yıldır?, Kaç saattir?, or just Ne zamandır?:

2sabahtan beri: since when

-⁠dır answers “how long?”. “Since when?” is -⁠dan beri. Course 1’s Lesson 11 had sabahtan akşama kadar, “from morning till night”. With beri the morning has no night: the count runs up to now. TDK’s dictionary puts beri just that way: -⁠den bu yana, literally “from … this way”, up to today.

-⁠dan beri takes a stretch of time too, and then it means the same as -⁠dır:

But a date, a day of the week, an hour on the clock is a point to count from, and for a point the lesson uses -⁠dan beri — the same line English draws between “for” and “since”:

The question for a point is Ne zamandan beri?. And two set phrases: o günden beri, “since that day”, and eskiden beri, “from way back, all along”:

3başladığımdan beri: since something happened

And when the count starts not from a date but from something that happened? “Since I started learning Turkish.” To the verb you add -⁠dık — the same one as in Course 1 Lesson 24’s -⁠dıktan sonra — then a possessive ending that says who did it, then -⁠dan beri.

Before the possessive’s vowel the k turns into ğ — the same softening as tabak → tabağı in Course 1’s Lesson 7:

Person by person:

sen and o end up the same, built two ways: for o an n slips in after the -⁠ı, as in Course 1 Lesson 7’s arabası → arabasına: başladığı + n + dan. For onlar the ending starts with a consonant, -⁠ları, so the k stays a k.

The vowel follows harmony, four ways, and after a hard consonant the d turns into t, as in -⁠dıktan sonra:

The possessive says who did it, and that needn’t be who the rest of the sentence is about: in the last one, “you” left, and it’s the house that’s quiet.

And an old acquaintance: Duyduğuma göre… — “From what I’ve heard…” — from Course 1’s Lesson 18. You took it whole then; now you can see what it’s made of: duy, -⁠duğ, -⁠um for “I”, then -⁠a and göre — “going by what I heard”.

4geleli and görüşmeyeli: it’s been so long since

There’s a shorter way. Add -⁠alı or -⁠eli to the stem — the last vowel picks which, as with -⁠lar / -⁠ler — with a y after a vowel: arayalı. This form has no person of its own. Put a stretch of time and oldu after it, and you have “it’s been so long since…”:

Who did it isn’t in the form; the words round it say — a name, a pronoun, the conversation:

There’s a full form too: the same verb first in -⁠dı, with its person, then -⁠alı: geldim geleli, “ever since I came”. That’s where the lesson’s title comes from: Kendimi bildim bileli, literally “since I knew myself” — for as long as I can remember. TDK lists it as a phrase of its own: öteden beri, eskiden beri, “all along, from way back”.

And the negative: -⁠mayalı, -⁠meyeli. Turkish counts from when the “not” began: görüşmeyeli, “since not seeing each other”. English counts from the other end: “since we last saw each other”:

5One fact, four ways

Here’s one fact: Bu evi 2021’de aldık. Hâlâ bu evde oturuyoruz. — “We bought this house in 2021. We still live in it.” And here it is, told all four ways:

In short, the question each one answers:

In English the last two both come out as “since”. They differ in person too: aldığımızdan has one, -⁠ımız for “we”, while alalı has none of its own — who bought the house, the conversation tells you.

7Dialogue: the door that shut by itself

August, a Friday, twenty to four. At five the whole office is expected at Orhan Bey’s: the window’s finished, and it’s time for that tea. And Kerem has been at the hamam in Üsküdar since three: he’s finally gone to measure the dome — last time he forgot. Defne, at the office, rings him.

How long: yarım saattir, three times; since what time: saat üçten beri; since what: ölçtüğümden beri; how long it’s been: arayalı yirmi dakika oldu. Çekiniz is Course 1 Lesson 10’s -⁠ınız, the one you read on signs: “pull”. “Push” is İtiniz, from itmek. bari is “at least”, birazdan “any minute now”, hoparlör the speaker, and kapanmak “to shut”, the pair of açılmak. And Defne’s kendi kendine is last lesson’s — about the same door.

8Reading

Five o’clock, at Orhan Bey’s. The garden window is finished and the tea is poured. Orhan Bey stands up, glass in hand. Everything below is his speech; the line with a dash is his wife’s. Read it through; open a translation only where you’re stuck.

doğmak is Course 1 Lesson 13’s “to be born”, soğumak Course 1 Lesson 18’s “to cool down”, and zamanında is “on time”. Duvar duvardır has Course 1 Lesson 23’s -⁠dır, said firmly, like a law: “a wall is a wall”. Dolabın arkasındaki kitap was the title of Orhan Bey’s letter in Lesson 5, and bu kere anlarsınız comes from the same letter.

9The lesson’s new words

These are the words the lesson brought in for the first time, in the order you met them. The forms themselves — -⁠dır, -⁠dığımdan beri, -⁠alı — stay in their sections; the words and names that turn up only in “Türkiye up close” stay there too.

This lesson’s words as flashcards →

10Say it yourself

Out loud first, then the answer. Each one needs one of the lesson’s four forms. Getting it wrong and then checking is exactly what this is for.

11Check yourself

Six items. A miss shows you the right answer straight away, and why.

12Homework

Two to say aloud, three to write. Write by hand or in your phone’s notes, then read it aloud: the ear finds what the eye let through.