1. Time

 Let's start with simple dialogue sentences about time, the question and different answers.

Now, time to explain the words and phrases used in this table. Let's start with the question, 'Saat kaç?'. Word by word:

Saat --> Hour

Kaç --> How many

It is not perfectly logical, but the question sentence used for asking the time is 'Saat kaç?'. Then, you may say, how do you ask how many hours? To say 'How many hours?' you would say 'Kaç saat?'. 'Saat kaç?' is a special phrase for asking the time which otherwise would not be very meaningful. More or less the same is true for the answer. The best thing is to try to learn the main phrase instead of trying to learn the logic, because the logic used here does not apply to other cases in the language. You basically say "Saat xxx.".

From the exact hour to half past, you say the time as minutes past hour. From half past to the next hour, convention is to sat the time as minutes to hour.

• The word for past is 'geçiyor'.

• The word for to is 'var'.

• The word for half is 'buçuk'.

• The word for quarter is 'çeyrek'.

The general phrase for "It is minutes past hours" is:

Saat hours-i minutes geçiyor. (Note the vowel harmony rules for the suffix -i)

And the general phrase for "It is minutes to hours" is:

Saat hours-e minutes var. (Note the vowel harmony rules for the suffix -e)

2. Date

Let's start with the days of the week and months:

2.1. Day of the week

A simple conversation about the day of the week would be like the following:

Let's examine the parts of the question sentence first:

bu --> this

gün --> day

bugün --> today

günler --> days

günlerden --> from the days (also means among the days)

ne --> what

Putting all these words together, the direct translation of 'Bugün günlerden ne?' would be 'Today among the days what?'. Funny? That's the way you ask the day of the week. After these explanations and translations, the answer sentence should be clear.

2.2. Whole Date

To ask the date, you say:

-Bugünün tarihi ne?

-14 Temmuz 2004.

Vocabulary:

bugün --> today

tarih --> date

bugünün tarihi --> today's date

ne --> what

Using these, the direct translation of the question sentence would be: 'Today's date what? '. Actually, this is how you form a regular question sentence in Turkish. You shouldn't worry about this yet, we'll cover it later in another lesson.

The answer doesn't need much explanation. The day number, followed by month's name, and finally  the year. The day number and the year are both read as a regular numbers. For reading years, it is always read as a whole as a single number. Years are never read as two parts like it is done in English in the case of 1996 (nineteen ninety six). The way you read this year in Turkish would be 'bin dokuz yüz doksan altı' (one thousand nine hundred ninety six).

3. Seasons

Let's see the words used for seasons in Turkish: