Turkish Street Language - Everything You See When You Walk Around

You land in Türkiye with about six words. Merhaba. Teşekkürler. Evet. Hayır. Su. Hesap.

Then you step outside and the city starts talking to you in capital letters.

Nobody teaches this vocabulary. Coursebooks open with Bu bir kalem, "this is a pen," as if your first week here will be spent inside a stationery drawer. Meanwhile the first hundred Turkish words that actually enter your eyes are painted on shutters, taped to windows, and bolted to poles.

So here they are. Not the words you will say first. The words you will read first.

The two kings of the Turkish street

Walk any street in İstanbul, Ankara or İzmir for four minutes and you will see both of these.

SATILIK. For sale. KİRALIK. For rent.

Taped inside car windscreens. Hanging off balconies. Spray painted on an empty plot in the middle of nowhere with a phone number underneath.

They both end in -lık, which roughly means "designated for this." Learn that ending once and you get a lot for free: günlük (daily), haftalık (weekly), yazlık (summer house), gözlük (glasses, a thing for the eyes).

Two more you will see on the same windows:

DEVREN KİRALIK, usually on a shuttered café. It means the business is changing hands, not just the space.

SAHİBİNDEN, "from the owner." No agent, no commission. It is also the name of the biggest classifieds site in the country, which is why people say it like a brand.

The shop window, shouting

İNDİRİM. Discount.

It comes from indirmek, to lower. A lowering. And it is everywhere from October to February.

The rest of the window:

• KAMPANYA, a promotion

• FIRSAT, a deal

• %50'YE VARAN İNDİRİM, discounts reaching 50%, which usually means one sad shirt is 50% off

• TAKSİT, instalment. 12 TAKSİT on a fridge is one of the most Turkish sights there is.

• PEŞİN, paid up front

• TOPTAN and PERAKENDE, wholesale and retail

• ÜCRETSİZ or BEDAVA, free

And the two you check before pushing a door: AÇIK and KAPALI. Open and closed.

Açık also means light for colours and weak/light for tea. And KAPALI ÇARŞI, the Grand Bazaar, is literally "the covered market."

The shop signs

There is one suffix doing most of the work above the shopfronts: -cı, -ci, -cu, -cü, and its -çı, -çi, -çu, -çü cousins.

It attaches to a noun and gives you the person who deals in that thing. Balık is fish, so a BALIKÇI sells fish. Kitap is book, so a KİTAPÇI sells books. Tüp is a gas canister, so TÜPÇÜ brings you one. Emlak is real estate, so EMLAKÇI shows you flats.

Once you see it, half the signs in the country decode themselves.

The shops that do not take the suffix are worth learning as a set: BAKKAL (corner shop), MANAV (greengrocer), KASAP (butcher), FIRIN (bakery, literally "oven"), PASTANE (patisserie), ŞARKÜTERİ (deli), KURU TEMİZLEME (dry cleaner), NALBUR and HIRDAVAT (hardware), KIRTASİYE (stationery).

The smell of the street

DÖNER literally means "it turns." The food is named after the verb it performs, which is one of the most satisfying things about Turkish.

KOKOREÇ is seasoned grilled lamb intestine. A genuine test of whether you are a tourist or a resident. Best eaten after 2am and before you think about it too hard.

The rest of the pavement menu:

• LAHMACUN, thin flatbread with spiced mince

• PİDE, boat shaped baked bread with toppings

• İSKENDER, döner over bread with tomato sauce and melted butter

• TANTUNİ, the finely chopped beef wrap from Mersin

• KUMPİR, the baked potato of your wildest dreams

• MİDYE DOLMA, stuffed mussels sold off a tray, eaten with lemon

• ÇİĞ KÖFTE, spiced bulgur wrapped in lettuce

• BÜFE, the small window that sells everything at 3am

• OCAKBAŞI, grill your own table

• MEYHANE, rakı and meze

• ESNAF LOKANTASI and EV YEMEKLERİ, the tradesman's canteen and "home cooking." Point at the tray. This is how you eat well and cheaply.

• KAHVALTI, breakfast. It is kahve altı, "under coffee." What you eat before the coffee.

• PAKET SERVİS, takeaway

• ÇAY BAHÇESİ, tea garden

When something goes wrong

ECZANE. Pharmacy. Green neon cross, white sign. Learn this one before you need it.

Then the word that will actually save your evening: NÖBETÇİ ECZANE, the duty pharmacy.

Pharmacies rotate, and one in each district stays open all night. Nöbet is a turn, and there is that -çi again, the one whose turn it is. Every closed pharmacy has a note in the window telling you which one is on duty tonight.

• ACİL, emergency. Big red letters on hospitals.

• DİŞ HEKİMİ, dentist. You will also see DİŞÇİ, the everyday version.

• POLİKLİNİK and TIP MERKEZİ, outpatient clinic and medical centre

• HASTANE, hospital. Hasta is sick, and -hane is house. Same ending as eczane, meyhane, pastane, postane. Once you notice -hane you see it everywhere. It always means the building where something happens.

• VETERİNER, vet

• 112, the emergency number. Worth more than any word on this page.

And the brass plaques by the door: AVUKAT (lawyer), HUKUK BÜROSU (law office), NOTER (notary, and you will meet one, everyone does), MALİ MÜŞAVİR (accountant).

Doors, and the small print on them

GİRİŞ. Entrance. ÇIKIŞ. Exit.

A matched pair and a free grammar lesson. Gir- is enter, çık- is go out, and -İş turns a verb into the act of doing it. Same machine, both directions.

Also written on glass, roughly in order of how likely you are to get them wrong:

• İTİNİZ, push

• ÇEKİNİZ, pull

• ACİL ÇIKIŞ and YANGIN ÇIKIŞI, emergency exit and fire exit

• YANGIN, fire

• ASANSÖR, lift

• MERDİVEN, stairs

• WC, TUVALET, LAVABO, toilet

• BAY and BAYAN, gentlemen and ladies. Check above the doors.

• KAT, floor. ZEMİN KAT is the ground floor.

• ISLAK ZEMİN, wet floor

• ARIZALI or BOZUK, out of order

• ZİLİ ÇALINIZ, ring the bell

• KAPICI, the building caretaker. Kapı is door, plus -cı. Of course.

The words that are shouting at you

DUR. Stop.

Three letters, and the most elegant grammar point in Turkish. The bare verb stem is the command. Durmak is to stop, so dur is stop. Same with GEL (come), BAK (look), GİT (go). No conjugation. Turkish imperatives are just the naked verb.

DİKKAT. Attention. The yellow triangle word, and also what a parent shouts at a child near a road.

Then the whole family of prohibition. The pattern is either -mAz (does not, cannot) or YASAKTIR (is forbidden). Learn the two shapes and you can read signs you have never seen.

• GİRİLMEZ, no entry

• PARK YASAKTIR, no parking

• SİGARA İÇİLMEZ, no smoking. Literally "cigarettes are not drunk." Turkish drinks its cigarettes.

• DİKKAT KÖPEK VAR, beware of the dog. Literally "attention, there is a dog."

Plus the road furniture: TEK YÖN (one way), ÇIKMAZ SOKAK (dead end, from "it does not exit"), YAYA GEÇİDİ (pedestrian crossing), OKUL GEÇİDİ (school crossing), YAVAŞ (slow), ÇALIŞMA VAR (roadworks), ÖNCE YAYA (pedestrians first, aspirational).

The words with a state behind them

BELEDİYE. The municipality. It runs your bins, your buses, your parks and your wedding hall, and its name is printed on all of them.

• MUHTARLIK, the office of your muhtar, the elected neighbourhood headman. There is no British or American equivalent, and he is the first stop for a lot of paperwork.

• KAYMAKAMLIK and VALİLİK, district and provincial governor's offices

• EMNİYET and KARAKOL, police headquarters and the local station

• VERGİ DAİRESİ, tax office

• PTT, post office

TEKEL deserves its own paragraph.

It is tek (single) plus el (hand). Monopoly. It was the name of the state alcohol and tobacco monopoly founded in 1925. The monopoly was privatised and dissolved decades ago. The word stayed on thousands of shopfronts anyway. TEKEL BAYİİ now just means the shop that sells beer and rakı.

TARİHİ. Historic. You will see it on restaurants, hamams, bakeries, and honestly anything older than a decade. TARİHİ SULTANAHMET KÖFTECİSİ. The enthusiasm ranges from genuinely fifteenth century to "we opened in 2004."

Nearby you will find VAKIF (foundation), CAMİ (mosque), TÜRBE (tomb), ÇEŞME (fountain), and HAN, the old caravanserai, now usually an office block full of workshops.

How to read an address

Turkish addresses run from big to small and use a fixed set of abbreviations.

Cumhuriyet Mah. Gül Sok. No: 14 Kat: 3 Daire: 7 Beşiktaş / İstanbul

• MAH. is mahalle, neighbourhood (a.k.a mh.)

• CAD. is cadde, avenue (a.k.a cd.)

• SOK. is sokak, street (a.k.a sk.)

• BUL. is bulvar, boulevard

• APT. is apartman, the building

• NO: building number

• KAT: floor

• DAİRE: flat number

• SİTE, a gated residential complex

  
  

And the transport words that get you there: DURAK (stop), İSKELE (ferry pier), PERON (platform), VAPUR (ferry), OTOGAR (coach station), GAR (train station).

DOLMUŞ is the best of them. The shared minibus, from dolmak, to become full. It leaves when it is full. And dolma, the stuffed vine leaf, is the same word.

And the ones aimed at you

DİL KURSU. Language course. Dil means both tongue and language, exactly like in English. You will see it on first floor windows above pharmacies, usually next to a flag.

KUAFÖR. Hairdresser, straight from the French coiffeur. Note the split: KUAFÖR is usually for women, BERBER is for men, and ERKEK KUAFÖRÜ is the middle ground.

Also: SÜRÜCÜ KURSU (driving school), DERSHANE (exam prep centre), ANAOKULU (kindergarten, literally "mother school"), SPOR SALONU (gym), HALI SAHA (five a side pitch).

Your decoder ring

If you remember nothing else from this post, remember these five endings. They will decode signs I never listed.

Ending	What it does	Where you see it
-lIk	designated for	satılık, kiralık, günlük
-cI / -çI	the person who deals in it	balıkçı, kitapçı, kapıcı, nöbetçi
-hane	the building where it happens	eczane, hastane, meyhane, pastane
-Iş	the act of doing it	giriş, çıkış
-mAz	does not, cannot	girilmez, içilmez, çıkmaz

Look at where these words came from. Arabic, Persian, Greek, French, Italian, all sitting comfortably next to homegrown coinages like indirim and tekel, held together by Turkish endings.

The street is an archive. Every shutter is a small piece of the last six hundred years.