So thoughtful of you, Sweet_Paradise. I don´t understand how this world works any more when everything can be shared for free, but I don´t care because you solved a big problem from me. I´m going to be travelling soon and I was just wondering which is worse: to spend half my money in the bookstore or to make a quarrel with my library and finally be banned from there. Thanks for the hint.

At this point of learning I would like to have a simple school grammar in my hand to get acquainted with the terminology. Funny as it may sound but I would like to learn how to speak about Turkish in Turkish.

I think it´s tanışabilir miyiz ´can we get to know each other?´.

´My heart is open for mercy one day. We never know when doomsday is due.´ (Not sure about the beginning: there seems to be too many grammatically unmarked words. Wait for corrections.)

This will sound funny if it´s wrong but I take the risk:

´My Lord, don´t give me money. Give me stamps. There are many people in my life who I need to send away.´

Thank you for the interesting link, Mavili. The obituary describes an exceptional personality with great acchievements but a humble character, always ready to learn. Turkish Grammar seems to me the culmination of his life work. It´s a very clear survey of the language structure where the author shows that he knows all the details but is qualified enough to guide the reader into what is essential. To be honest, I never noticed the book was so old until Henry mentioned it here. Maybe a native would have seen it from the examples but from the learner´s point of view it looks like it was published yesterday.

I wouldn´t be too much concerned if the writer is native or not. Not on the level of scholarliness that Professor Lewis represents. Only in one point of grammar, relative clauses, he on purpose chooses the English grammar concepts as his starting point. He apologises this in the beginning of the paragraph but soon convinces the reader that the choice was made for the learner´s best interest.

I couldn´t help noticing one thing: the article mentions that this respectable professor was never too proud to offer his help as a translator when people were in trouble...

´You don´t write any more.´

tunci is back (and it´s so nice).

Thank you, gokuyum, for the piece of poetry. I guess the eyeglasses represent something bigger in the poem even though I perfectly well recognize the feeling when one´s glasses are in danger. Take my right arm but save my glasses...and the tranquility when you can watch the world through them again.

Why don´t you show us the original so that we can see how you succeeded, gokuyum? (One should actually be careful with joking here because sometimes everything is taken so seriously.)

Is namus a plus word or minus word in Turkish culture? In your example, si++, it is shown in a positive context but in the links that you give it is connected to things like suppression, tyranny and honour killing. (I do understand these are two completely different contexts but still I ask.)

Namus as a negative concept is often connected to Islamic countries and of course for a reason but I think this is a serious generalisation also. My country (which I am not going to mention here again) is one of the most violent in Europe, and a typical murder here (if it´s not one drunkard hitting another with an empty bottle) is a forsaken husband taking an axe and paying a visit to his ex wife and her new man plus the ex mother-in-law as a bonus. This looks to me like a pure honour killing also.

I have paid attention to cultural differences also when it comes to jealousy. I understand in eastern cultures (sorry, the word is not very clear) jealousy is considered an inseparable part of love but in the west it´s a shame and a mark of a bad self-esteem. For those people who cannot live with this for cultural or other reasons it can lead into personal tragedies.