Lesson 6 — Going Round for Dinner

1Thanks, please, sorry

You’ve been saying Teşekkür ederim since Lesson 1, you asked for tea with lütfen in Lesson 3, and every stallholder at the market greeted you with Buyurun. Today we round up the rest of the politeness — and not at random: tonight we’re going round to someone’s for dinner, and nearly everything on this list gets said there.

Sağ ol and sağ olun work like last lesson’s hoşça kal and hoşça kalın: add the -un when you’re thanking several people, or someone older. Sağ means “alive, healthy”, so the friendly Turkish thank-you is really a wish for your health. Like half the phrases on this list, if you noticed.

Affedersiniz is a mouthful, but don’t let it put you off: word for word it’s “you will forgive”, in a tense we won’t reach for a while. For now, take it whole. It’s how you call a waiter over, ask for directions, or squeeze your way off a bus.

And if you only learn one phrase on this list, make it Elinize sağlık. You say it to whoever did the cooking, and what it praises isn’t the food but the hands that made it. The reply is Afiyet olsun. Just one rule: taste first. Thanking someone’s hands for a soup you haven’t touched comes out strange — as today’s story will prove.

2Yes, no and everything in between

You’ve had evet and hayır since Lesson 2, tamam from the market and peki from the tea rota. But a bare hayır sounds a bit curt in Turkish, and one evet for everything gets dull. Here’s a richer ladder, starting with yes.

Olur is the everyday workhorse yes: “Çay?” — “Olur!”. Bence de is built from ben and Lesson 4’s -ce, the same one that turns Türk into Türkçe. Here it means “in my view”. How it pulls that off comes much later; take the phrase now, since it’s the shortest way there is to back someone up.

Now no, from soft to firm.

Olur and olmaz are a pair, like var and yok — one word for “it’ll do”, one for “it won’t”. Doğru and yanlış are “right” and “wrong”, with a bonus: you’ll recognise them on any Turkish test paper.

Now look at the last two lines — there’s nothing in them you haven’t met. Katılmıyorum is the ordinary -yor negative, and the verb wants a “to”: sana. And karşı is last lesson’s “other shore”. If you’re standing opposite, you’re against: Buna karşıyım. Buna is bu in its “to” form, picking up the same n that o does: bu → buna, bunda, bundan.

And one tip that will save you a few awkward moments. Turks rarely say no in a single word: maalesef followed by a reason sounds far warmer. Save asla for when someone tries to clear away your unfinished tea.

3Who, what, when, why: the question words

kim? ne? nerede? nasıl? have been sitting in your notes since Lesson 1, and last lesson warned you: if a question has a question word, it doesn’t need mu. Today we put all these words together. And here’s the good news: in Turkish this may be the easiest bit of grammar there is. The question word sits exactly where the answer will sit. Nothing moves, no do or does, no turning the sentence round.

Let’s take one sentence and ask it every question we can. Deniz akşam pastaneden bir kilo baklava alıyor — “Deniz is buying a kilo of baklava at the pastry shop this evening”. Watch where the question word lands.

Ne zaman is literally “what time”, and that’s your “when”. But the loveliest word in the set is neden, “why”. Take it apart and there’s last lesson inside: ne + den, “from what”. Turkish asks for a reason the same way it asks where a journey starts. There’s a chattier niye too — that’s ne in its “to” form: “to what?”.

One more thing. A question word behaves like any noun: it takes the cases — kime, kimden, nereye, you’ve seen those — and it takes Lesson 1’s personal endings. You’ve been saying Nasılsın? since the first day, and that’s just nasıl + sın. These two work the same way:

Neredesin? is the first thing you’ll hear when a Turkish friend rings to find out why you’re late. And one last detail: -da on a person means not just “who has it” but “at whose place”. Bu akşam Ayşe’deyiz — “we’re at Ayşe’s tonight”.

4Before and after: sonra and önce

Last lesson’s -dan gets what may be its most useful job today: “before” and “after”. Sonra is “after”, önce is “before”. They’re postpositions — prepositions that come after the word. Given that Turkish hangs everything on the end anyway, that shouldn’t come as a shock.

The first thing to remember: the word in front of sonra and önce goes into “from”. After the lesson is “from the lesson after”: dersten sonra. It sounds odd until you’re used to it, and you get used to it fast.

Second: with a length of time — dakika, saat, gün, hafta, ay, yıl — there’s no ending at all. Then sonra means “in” and önce means “ago”. And remember Lesson 3: no plural after a number, so it’s iki gün, never iki günler.

Notice that? -yor is happy to talk about plans too, just like Yarın Ankara’ya gidiyoruz last lesson. “Ago”, though, has to do without a verb for now: “he came two hours ago” needs the past tense, and that’s a few lessons off yet. Take the phrase iki saat önce now all the same.

Third: you can stack the two. First the “from what”, then how long.

Last, both words also stand on their own, with no case at all: önce is “first”, sonra is “then”. It’s how anyone in Türkiye tells you what order to do things in — from a recipe to the way to the market.

6Dialogue: a call from the pastry shop

Ayşe rings Can. He’s at the pastry shop with Deniz, who’s going to a Turkish home for dinner for the first time tonight — to Sevim teyze on the top floor — and can’t decide what to bring. Question words, olur and haklısın, sonra and önce — and one phrase Deniz supposedly “knows”. Keep it in mind: the story will need it.

7Reading

Deniz moved in in Lesson 1 — and found out on day one that Turkish tea can’t be refused. In Lesson 2 he lost his key, in Lesson 3 he was handed Friday, in Lesson 4 he found his tongue over backgammon, and in Lesson 5 he lost a simit to a gull. Today he’s been asked to dinner for the first time. He knows all the right words — now he just has to say them in the right order.

8The lesson’s new words

Everything new from today, in the order it turned up. The polite phrases and the yes-to-no ladder aren’t here: they’re set expressions, and they’re better off whole in the first two sections. Verbs are in their dictionary form.

9Say it yourself

No options to pick from here — you build the answer. Read the cue, say it in Turkish out loud, and only then check. Got it wrong? Good — that’s exactly how it sticks. Peeking first doesn’t help: then you’re practising recognising, not speaking.

10Check yourself

Six items: everything that happens on a visit, plus questions, before and after. A miss still shows you the right answer, so there’s no shame in guessing.

11Homework

Politeness, like the cases, lives in your mouth rather than on paper. Everything below is meant to get as much said out loud as possible today. If “after” keeps coming out without the -dan, don’t worry — it’s the commonest slip there is, and repetition cures it.