Welcome, Tolga Bey. Do sit down. Would you tell us a little about yourself?
1imzalandı: done, never mind who did it
You’ve met the passive already, as whole words, without the rule. Eleman aranıyor, “Staff wanted”, on the sign in a shop window in Course 1’s Lesson 23. Dün akşam rakibe yenildik, “Last night we lost to the other side”, in Lesson 2. And Bardaklar yıkandı, “The glasses have been washed”, in Lesson 6, which promised the passive for Lesson 10. Here it is.
In an ordinary sentence the one who acts is in charge: Zehra Hanım sözleşmeyi imzaladı, “Zehra Hanım signed the contract”. In the passive what matters is what got done, and who did it can go unsaid. An -n or an -l goes in between the stem and the tense, and the contract is signed:
Sözleşme imzalandı.— The contract has been signed.
In Turkish it’s the edilgen çatı. çatı is the voice, and this is the fourth this course: the reciprocal in Lesson 2, the reflexive in Lesson 6, the causative in Lesson 9. TDK’s dictionary explains edilgen as “affected by what is done”, and the voice as the one where it isn’t clear who did the job. As last time, the word has its own ending inside it: et is “do”, edil “be done”.
English uses “be” and the past participle: “has been signed”, “is signed”, “will be signed”. Turkish needs one ending, and then everything you know works on it: any tense, the negative, the question, -malı, -abilir, “if” with -sa. Like the causative, the passive ending goes straight after the stem:
Yeni arkadaşlar bu hafta seçilecek.— The new colleagues will be chosen this week.
Şu anda yeni bir mimar aranıyor.— A new architect is being looked for right now.
Bu ofiste kahve makinesi hiç boş bırakılmaz.— In this office the coffee machine is never left empty.
Kahve makinesi yine temizlenmedi.— The coffee machine hasn’t been cleaned again.
Bu cephe korunmalı.— This façade must be preserved.
Bina restore edilirse, sokak çok güzel olur.— If the building is restored, the street will look lovely.
Bu ev yüz yıl önce yapılmış.— This house was built a hundred years ago, they say.
The last one has Course 1 Lesson 18’s -mış: “so they say”. And in Lesson 9 Kerem came in with a new haircut because of the meeting at the council: Belki fotoğraf çekerler, “They might take photos”. Now you can ask how that went:
Fotoğraf çekildi mi? — Çekildi, ama Kerem’in saçı görülmedi.— Were any photos taken? — They were, but you couldn’t see Kerem’s haircut.
2-Il, -In, -n: which ending
There are three endings, and choosing is easy: look at how the stem ends.
After a vowel a bare -n will do: imzala, imzalan; bekle, beklen; oku, okun. That’s the aranıyor on the sign: ara, “look for”, then -n and -ıyor. After l it’s -In: al, alın; bil, bilin; bul, bulun. After any other consonant it’s -Il: yap, yapıl; ver, veril; gör, görül. The stem’s last vowel picks the vowel in -Il and -In, one of four, as with Lesson 2’s -ış.
| Last vowel | After a consonant other than l | After l |
|---|---|---|
| a ı | yap → yapıl | al → alın |
| e i | ver → veril | bil → bilin |
| o u | kur → kurul | bul → bulun |
| ö ü | gör → görül | gül → gülün |
In the causative ye and de broke the rule; here they follow it: yen, den. They give you two phrases you’ll use at any market:
Bu nasıl yenir?— How do you eat this?
Buna Türkçe ne denir?— What’s this called in Turkish?
This yenmek is “to be eaten”, and all it shares with Lesson 2’s yenmek, “to beat”, is its sound and spelling: TDK’s dictionary gives them two separate entries.
And et becomes edil: the t turns into d before a vowel, softening, as in gidiyor. So every verb made with etmek — kabul etmek, tamir etmek, restore etmek — ends in edilmek in the passive:
Proje kabul edildi.— The project has been accepted.
Çatı tamir edilecek.— The roof is going to be repaired.
A passive verb takes the person endings too. Its subject is whoever it was done to, and that gives you the phrase in this lesson’s title:
İşe alındım. İşe alındın. İşe alındı.— I’ve been hired. You’ve been hired. He’s (she’s) been hired.
İşe alındık. İşe alındınız. İşe alındılar.— We’ve been hired. You’ve been hired. They’ve been hired.
İşe alınmadım.— I didn’t get the job.
İşe alındınız mı? — Alındım!— Did you get the job? — I did!
İşe alınmadınız mı?— Didn’t you get the job?
işe almak is “to take someone on”, and that’s how TDK’s dictionary explains it: to start someone working at your workplace. işe alınmak is the same thing seen from the other side of the desk.
3tarafından and -cA: who did it
The passive is for when who did it isn’t the point. But if you do want to say who, put tarafından before the verb. You know taraf: bahçe tarafında, “on the garden side”, for Orhan Bey’s window in Lesson 2. tarafından is literally “from their side”, and what it means is “by”:
Sözleşme Zehra Hanım tarafından imzalandı.— The contract was signed by Zehra Hanım.
İş tanımları Nilay Hanım tarafından yazıldı.— The job descriptions were written by Nilay Hanım.
Before tarafından a name stands as it is, with no endings. A pronoun works differently: “my side”, “your side” are tarafım, tarafınız, and the ending already says whose, so benim and sizin can go. But senin and onun stay: “your side” and “his side” with -dan come out the same, tarafından, and without the pronoun you can’t tell who’s meant. And onlar stands like a name, with no endings. All six:
ben → (benim) tarafımdan— I → by me
sen → senin tarafından— you → by you
o → onun tarafından— he, she → by him, by her
biz → (bizim) tarafımızdan— we → by us
siz → (sizin) tarafınızdan— you (polite, or several) → by you
onlar → onlar tarafından— they → by them
Bu rapor tarafımdan yazıldı.— This report was written by me.
Bu çizim senin tarafından mı yapıldı?— Was this drawing done by you?
And one more way. TDK’s dictionary explains herkesçe as herkes tarafından, “by everyone”: one ending doing the job of tarafından. It looks like the -ca and -ce of Course 1 Lesson 20’s bence and saatlerce, and after a voiceless consonant it’s ç, as ever:
Bu kural herkesçe bilinir.— Everyone knows this rule.
belediyece, “by the council”, works the same way:
Proje belediyece kabul edildi.— The project has been accepted by the council.
4geç kalınmaz: “it isn’t done”
Here’s something Turkish can do and English can’t: make a passive from a verb with no object. kalmak, çalışmak, gitmek — there’s nothing for them to be done to, so a passive like this has no subject at all. Nobody in particular: people in general. English says “you don’t…”, “nobody…”, “how do you get there?”:
Bu ofiste geç kalınmaz.— Nobody’s late in this office.
Pazar günleri çalışılmaz.— Nobody works on Sundays.
Oraya nasıl gidilir?— How do you get there?
Toplantıya zamanında gelinmeli.— You should get to meetings on time.
The first one is Zehra Hanım’s rule, which Defne told Kerem in Lesson 1: Zehra Hanım her şeyi affeder, geç kalmayı affetmez, “Zehra Hanım forgives everything except lateness”. gidilir comes from git, with the same softening as edil. And Course 1 Lesson 21’s aorist turns a sentence like this into a rule: with -Ir, “it’s done” (gidilir); with -mAz, “it isn’t done” (kalınmaz).
Under gezilmek, from gezmek, “to walk about”, TDK’s dictionary has an example any grandmother might say:
Bu kılıkla sokakta gezilmez.— You don’t go out in the street looking like that.
And in Lesson 8, in “Türkiye up close”, we gave the dictionary’s lodos example in translation only: “in a lodos, nobody goes out fishing”. Now you can read it whole: çıkmak, “to go out”, has no object.
Lodosta balığa çıkılmaz.— In a lodos, nobody goes out fishing.
5yıkandı: had a wash, or was washed?
Lesson 6 gave you a fair warning: -n and -l have two jobs, “yourself” and “done by someone”. Now you can see where they meet: after a vowel both take a bare -n, and after l the passive takes -In, just like the reflexive. Lesson 6’s question still works: could whoever it’s about do this to themselves? And now there’s a second one: could you add tarafından?
Kerem yıkandı.— Kerem had a wash.
Bardaklar Kerem tarafından yıkandı.— The glasses were washed by Kerem.
TDK’s dictionary gives açılmak both senses at once: “to come open” and “to be opened”. The hamam door in Lesson 6 opened by itself; the office gets opened by someone every morning:
Kapı kendi kendine açıldı!— The door opened by itself!
Ofis her sabah Defne tarafından açılır.— The office is opened by Defne every morning.
And one more pair from Lesson 6: çekilmek is “to step aside”, but with a camera it’s the passive of çekmek:
Lütfen biraz çekilin, geçeyim.— Could you step aside a little, please? Let me through.
Bu fotoğraf Defne tarafından çekildi.— This photo was taken by Defne.
6The four voices side by side
This course’s four voices — and now you know them all. Each one is an ending straight after the stem, and each one changes who does what in the verb:
işteş çatı: -Iş, -ş → tanıştık— reciprocal: each other, together — “we met”
dönüşlü fiil: -In, -n, -Il → yıkandım— reflexive: yourself — “I had a wash”
ettirgen çatı: -dIr, -t → kestirdim— causative: getting it done — “I had my hair cut”
edilgen çatı: -Il, -In, -n → yapıldı— passive: done by someone — “it was done”
And each in one sentence, as you met it:
Kerem’le Defne ilk gün tanıştı.— Kerem and Defne met on the first day.
Kedi dolabın arkasına saklandı.— The cat hid behind the cupboard.
Saçımı kestirdim.— I had my hair cut.
İşe alındınız.— You’ve got the job.
The endings do look alike: both the reflexive and the passive have -n and -l. Getting one wrong is nothing to worry about; not asking yourself who does what is. That’s what the two questions in the last section are for.
7Türkiye up close: the cumba, a window over the street
In Lesson 2, Orhan Bey wanted to drink his tea at a window every morning and look out at the street, and the board wouldn’t allow him a big window on the street side. Old houses had a cumba for that.
TDK’s dictionary describes it as a part of a room on an upper floor that juts out from the wall towards the street and rests on supports, payanda, against the façade. The word came from Persian. It has a second name too, çıkma: çıkmak with Course 1 Lesson 22’s -ma, the bit that has come out of the wall.
The TDV encyclopaedia adds what it was for: looking at the street without being seen from outside. It’s a window with a lattice, a kafes, or a sort of closed balcony with a roof and windows on three sides. And TDV says so in the passive: dışarıdan görülmeden, “without being seen from outside”, görül with the -meden of Course 1’s Lesson 24.
Cumbadan sokak üç taraftan görülür.— From a cumba you can see the street on three sides.
The dictionary’s second sense is an old house’s latticed bay at window height, and its example is a whole scene:
Nihayet dün gece komşu kadın cumbadan seslendi.— At last, last night, the woman next door called out from the cumba.
And one more detail from the same dictionary. TDK illustrates cumbalı, “with a cumba”, with a sentence about Üsküdar: about its houses with cumbas, looking at each other. Üsküdar is where the five old buildings stand that Zehra Hanım’s office is restoring.
8Dialogue: the interview
A Tuesday at the end of November: the interviews Nilay Hanım wrote about in her report. Nilay Hanım and Zehra Hanım are at the table, and Defne’s there too: she read the CVs. The candidate for the civil engineer’s job is the engineers’ goalkeeper from Lesson 2. His name is Tolga Bey.
Nilay:
Hoş geldiniz, Tolga Bey. Buyurun, oturun. Kendinizi tanıtır mısınız?
Tolga:
Tabii. İnşaat mühendisiyim. On yıldır restorasyon şantiyelerinde çalışıyorum.
Of course. I’m a civil engineer. I’ve been working on restoration sites for ten years.
Nilay:
Öz geçmişinizde bir satır var: “Futbol: kaleci.”
There’s a line in your CV: “Football: goalkeeper.”
Tolga:
Evet. Her yıl bu ofisle bir maç yapıyoruz. Bu yıl bana üç gol atıldı.
Yes. Every year we play a match against this office. This year three goals went in past me.
Tolga:
Üçü de Defne Hanım tarafından.
All three by Defne Hanım.
Defne:
Üçünü de hatırlıyorum. Üçüncüsü son dakikadaydı!
I remember all three. The third was in the last minute!
Zehra:
Defne Hanım… Bugün maç yok, iş görüşmesi var.
Defne Hanım… It’s an interview today, not a match.
Nilay:
Tolga Bey, sizden bir şey rica edeceğim. Bu sokağın fotoğrafına bakıp küçük bir cephe çizer misiniz?
Tolga Bey, I have a favour to ask. Would you look at this photo of the street and draw a small façade?
Tolga:
Tabii. Üçüncü ev olsun. Cumbası çok güzel.
Of course. Let’s have the third house. Its cumba is lovely.
Tolga:
Bitti. Ama bir sorun var: cumbanın payandaları çok eski. Önce onlar onarılmalı.
Done. But there’s a problem: the cumba’s supports are very old. They need repairing first.
Zehra:
Doğru. Son bir soru, Tolga Bey: bu ofiste toplantılara geç kalınır mı?
Right. One last question, Tolga Bey: do people come late to meetings in this office?
Tolga:
Kalınmaz, Zehra Hanım. Bu ofiste geç kalınmaz.
They don’t, Zehra Hanım. Nobody’s late in this office.
Zehra:
Bunu nereden biliyorsunuz?
How do you know that?
Tolga:
Maçın hakemi sizdiniz, Zehra Hanım. İki arkadaşım beş dakika geç geldi ve on dakika kenarda bekledi.
You were the referee at the match, Zehra Hanım. Two of my teammates were five minutes late and waited ten minutes on the sideline.
Nilay:
Teşekkür ederiz, Tolga Bey. Sonuç size e-postayla gönderilecek.
Thank you, Tolga Bey. The result will be sent to you by e-mail.
Zehra:
Gerek yok, Nilay Hanım. Tolga Bey, işe alındınız.
No need, Nilay Hanım. Tolga Bey, you’ve got the job.
Tolga:
Gerçekten mi? Çok teşekkür ederim, Zehra Hanım!
Really? Thank you very much, Zehra Hanım!
Kerem:
Tolga Bey, ofisi gezdireyim mi? Aa… işe mi alındınız?
Tolga Bey, shall I show you round the office? Oh… have you got the job?
Kerem:
Harika! Gelecek yıl maçta kalede siz durursunuz, ben de sonunda forvet olurum!
Brilliant! Next year you’ll be in goal at the match, and I can finally play up front!
Defne:
Sen forvet olursan, Kerem, goller kim tarafından atılacak?
If you’re up front, Kerem, who’s going to score the goals?
Kerem:
Benim tarafımdan, tabii!
Me, of course!
atıldı, onarılmalı, kalınır, kalınmaz, gönderilecek, alındınız, atılacak: all passives; tarafından says who scores, and Kerem answers with tarafımdan. Kendinizi tanıtır mısınız? is “Would you tell us a little about yourself?”: kendinizi is Lesson 6’s, and tanıtmak is the causative of tanımak, “to know”: to make someone known. The two latecomers and the ten minutes on the sideline are from Kerem’s e-mail about the match in Lesson 2, which Zehra Hanım refereed. payanda is from “Türkiye up close”. And Kerem wanted to play up front back then: “Next year I want to play up front.”
9Reading
A Monday in January. Work is starting on the street in Üsküdar, and the office puts up a notice. The first part is the notice itself, as official as notices are; then come the neighbours’ notes and the answers. Read it through; open a translation only where you’re stuck.
Duyuru
A notice on the street — and what got written under it.
Sayın komşularımız,
Dear neighbours,
Sokağımızdaki beş eski binanın restorasyonuna bugün başlanıyor.
Today work begins on restoring the five old buildings in our street.
Çalışmalar tarafımızdan yapılacak.
The work will be carried out by us.
Hafta içi sabah dokuzdan akşam beşe kadar çalışılacak.
On weekdays work will go on from nine in the morning to five in the evening.
Cumartesi ve pazar günleri çalışılmaz.
There’s no work on Saturdays or Sundays.
Çalışma saatlerinde sokağa arabayla girilmez.
During working hours the street can’t be entered by car.
Sorularınız Defne Hanım tarafından cevaplanacak.
Your questions will be answered by Defne Hanım.
Sorularınızı bu duyurunun altına yazabilirsiniz.
You can write your questions under this notice.
Anlayışınız için teşekkür ederiz.
Thank you for your understanding.
Restorasyon ekibi
The restoration team
Akşam duyurunun altına üç not yazıldı.
By evening three notes had been written under the notice.
— Ben üç numarada oturuyorum. Cumbamdan bütün sokak görülür.
“I live at number 3. You can see the whole street from my cumba.”
Saat onda işçilere çay benden!
“Tea for the workers at ten — on me!”
— Ben köşedeki bakkalım. Sokak kapanırsa, bakkala nasıl gelinir?
“I’m the grocer on the corner. If the street closes, how do people get to the shop?”
— Ben dokuz yaşındayım. Pazar günü sokakta top oynanır mı?
“I’m nine. Can we play football in the street on Sunday?”
Ertesi sabah cevaplar yazıldı. İkisi Defne Hanım tarafından.
The next morning the answers were written. Two of them by Defne Hanım.
— Çok teşekkürler! Çaylar saat onda içilecek.
“Thank you so much! Tea will be drunk at ten.”
— Sokak sadece arabalara kapanacak. Bakkala her zaman yürüyerek gelinir.
“The street will only be closed to cars. You can always walk to the shop.”
Üçüncü cevap başka bir el yazısıyla yazıldı:
The third answer was in different handwriting:
— Pazar günü sokakta top oynanır. Kaleci bizden! Tolga
“There’s football in the street on Sunday. The goalkeeper’s on us! Tolga”
Pazar günü sokakta büyük bir maç oynandı.
On Sunday a big match was played in the street.
Mahallenin bütün çocukları geldi.
All the children in the neighbourhood came.
Kalede Tolga Bey vardı, forvette Kerem Bey.
Tolga Bey was in goal, and Kerem Bey up front.
Maç üç numaranın cumbasından da izlendi.
The match was watched from the cumba at number 3 as well.
Kerem Bey tarafından kaç gol atıldı?
How many goals were scored by Kerem Bey?
Bu soru cevaplanmadı.
That question was never answered.
başlanıyor, çalışılacak, çalışılmaz, girilmez, gelinir: passives with no subject, from section 4. tarafımızdan is “by us”. köşedeki is “the one on the corner”, with Course 1 Lesson 13’s -ki. kapanmak is Lesson 7’s “to shut”; of a street, “to close to traffic”. Kaleci bizden is “the goalkeeper’s from us”, said the way the neighbour says her tea’s on her: leave the goalkeeper to us.
1Who will answer the neighbours’ questions?
2What does the neighbour at number 3 promise?
3Who wrote the third answer?
10The lesson’s new words
These are the words the lesson brought in for the first time, in the order you met them. Passives that follow the rule from verbs you know aren’t here: those you can build yourself.
New words
- tamir etmekto repair
- projeproject
- işe almakto take on, to hire
- tarafındanby (someone, in a passive)
- kılıkget-up, the way someone’s dressed
- cumbacumba, a closed bay window over the street
- payandasupport, strut
- çıkmaprojection (another name for a cumba)
- kafeslattice (on a window); cage
- nihayetat last
- satırline (of writing)
- onarmakto repair, to restore
- duyurunotice, announcement
- hafta içion weekdays
- ekipteam, crew
- bakkalcorner shop; grocer
11Say it yourself
Out loud first, then the answer. Each one needs a passive, and the last one puts it beside last lesson’s causative. Getting it wrong and then checking is exactly what this is for.
the contract has been signed
Sözleşme imzalandı.
you’ve got the job!
İşe alındınız!
this report was written by me
Bu rapor tarafımdan yazıldı.
nobody’s late in this office
Bu ofiste geç kalınmaz.
how do you get there?
Oraya nasıl gidilir?
I’ll get the car washed: it’ll be washed tomorrow
Arabamı yıkatacağım: yarın yıkanacak.
12Check yourself
Six items. A miss shows you the right answer straight away, and why.
1Match each picture to its word.
2Fill in the right word: “The contract has been signed.”
Sözleşme ?
3What’s the passive of bulmak?
4Fill in the right word: “Nobody’s late in this office.”
Bu ofiste geç ?
5Fill in the right word: “This report was written by me.”
Bu rapor ? yazıldı.
6Which of these sentences is a passive?
13Homework
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.
- One verb through every tense, out loud: yapılıyor, yapıldı, yapılacak, yapılır, yapılmalı, yapılırsa — and each one in the negative. Then the same with alınmak and okunmak.
- Walk round your home and say out loud what’s been done and what hasn’t: Bardaklar yıkandı, Çay yapılmadı… Then add who did it, with tarafından.
- The rules of your home or your workplace, five or six sentences with no “who”: Bizim evde geç yatılmaz, Ofiste yemek yenmez…
- A notice, like the one in “Reading”: for your building, your office or your yard. What will be done, when there’s work and when there isn’t, who will answer questions. With Sayın at the top and Anlayışınız için teşekkür ederiz at the end.
- Your week in three columns: what you did yourself, what you had others do, as last lesson, and what simply got done: Raporu yazdım, Saçımı kestirdim, Ofis temizlendi…