This week, I learned more common phrases and numbers in Turkish. Hazal and I reviewed common phrases that we learned last week and also added some more. I also practiced my pronunciation skills by having a conversation with Hazal. One of the conversations that we practiced over and over was, “Merhaba! Nasilsiniz?” which means Hello! How are you?. The response would be, “Iyiyim. Tesekkür ederim. Siz nasilsiniz?” which means “I’m fine. Thank you. How are you?” The response would then be, “Ben de iyiyim. Tesekkür ederim”, which means “I’m also fine. Thank you”.
I was reminded that there is a formal and informal language system in Turkish. For example, “Sen nasilsin?” is informal for asking “how are you?”. If you want to ask formally, you would say, “nasilsiniz?”.
I also learned how to say greeting phrases throughout different times of the day. I learned that good morning is “günaydin!”, good day is “iyi günler”, good evening is “iyi aksamlar”, and good night is “iyi geceler!”. Another new phrase I learned was “afiyet iksun!” which means enjoy your meal. There is a similar phrase in Korean, so it was interesting to learn and make the connection. One phrase that was very interesting to me was “Cok yasa” which means, “live long, bless you”. It is a phrase said when saying farewell and wishing the best for the other party.
I also learned how to count in Turkish. Zero is sifir, one is bir, two is iki, 3 is üs, four is dört, five is bes, six is alti, seven is yedi, eight is sekiz, nine is dokuz, and ten is on. The interesting thing about the Turkish counting system is that while we say eleven, in Turkish, you would literally say “ten, one”. I learned that there is never an “and” when counting numbers in Turkish. Eleven in Turkish is “on bir”. Twenty is yirmi, thirty is otuz, fourty is kirk, fifty is elli, sixty is altmis, seventy is yetmis, eighty is seksen, ninety is doksan, one hundred is yüz.
I learned how to say my phone number in Turkish, which is “arti bir (+1), dokuz yüz dokuz (909), dokuz yüz doksan iki (992), seksen sekiz (88), elli sekiz (58)”.
One of the challenges I ran into was being able to fluently use the phrases I learned in a conversation. I am becoming more familiar with the phrases I learned about a month ago; however, because Turkish is a completely new language, I am extremely slow at being able to use phrases and numbers I have learned. Another obstacle I have run into is the tempo and speed of the language. Turkish is spoken very quickly and I am unfamiliar with the pronunciations. To overcome these obstacles, Hazal has recommended that I record a conversation and has assigned me homework to help me memorize and become familiar with numbers and phrases.
Replies
Çok yaşa is used in other ways also. It can be used when someone sneezes or even as an equivalent to "long live" as in "long live the king"--padişahım çok yaşa.
Another method you might want to pursue is writing down the conversation over and over while sounding out what you are writing.
Merhaba--say Merhaba
Nasılsın--say nasılsın
etc
This has helped me get to the point where is is more reflexive and requires almost no thought to say.