Taxi's in Turkia charge double the rate when they are going to or coming from an airport.

The reason they and the authorities say is that airports are outside the residental area and they can't find and other passangers when they return.

This is totally stupid as they should not start charging you double while you are still in the city center. But they do.

What I do is that I go to the farest place with normall tarif. Then I change taxis. And only when I'm already close top the airport I start paying double.

Assuming the airport is 10 miles away from you and the reidental area (council districts) ends after 7 miles. When you take a taxi and tell him that you are going to the airport he will swich to the double rate immediately and will charge double for the whole 10 miles.

But instead if you say you are going to town X which is 7 miles away then he charges you normal but never mention the airport. If you do even though you want to get out on town X he will try changing you double for using the word airport (havaalanı.

Taxi drivers in Turkia and the department they are attached to are not among the most intelligent folks.
I once in a smillar situation took a taxi and told the man a place name in the city. The place was called "Pursaklar" in Ankara. It is within the area you can go for normal fare. We went there and everything was normal. I was about to leave the taxi. I had a huge suitcase. I told the man to stop near a taxi stop as I planned to swich to another taxi. He stopped and told me the price. It was the normal tariff. As I gave him the money I made the stupidest thing in my life and I asked him whether it would be possible to go the airport.
The taxi had air conditioning and the other ones in Pursaklar didn't have. They were all the old crappy models. The man suddenly changed his face. I used the critical word. I said airport. Now he told me that I should have told him from the beginning that I was going to the airport and he would have charged me accordingly. He was telling me that it was the rule to charge double when somebody goes to the airport.
But I said "let's assume I'm not going to the airport and I'm coming to Pursaklar. Now we are here and I will pay you the ragular tarif. Again assume I go out and another passanger stops you asking if you would go from Pursaklar to the airport. Would you?"
The man didn't understand a thing what I was telling. At the end I went crazy. I was shouting. There is no logic on the regulatons. It is totally nonsense. Then I changed the taxi and took one of the crapy ones.

Yes, without the -dir it sounds better. The -dir is really for statements mostly scientific or historical etc. It is like saying "it is a fact that" when you use -dir.

İstanbul, Türkiye'nin en büyük şehridir.

So when you say "bu araba yeşildir" you are saying "it is a fact that this car is green". Instead you can just say "Bu araba yeşil".

This is a noun sentence:

"Hava çok güzel"

The usage of the complement -dir (ek fiil) is dropping day by day.

We would be smillar to Iran, Iraq or Arabia with the exception that the community in these countries understands the language they are speaking but we would not.

Ottomans didn't understand their language. Nobody could write or read it except talented professionals.

You had to pay somebody to write a letter for you. It took a few years to learn to write the language. Ottoman langauge consists of three languages that were mixed up.

Ottoman language was artificially created. Turkish existed before Ottoman Empire and Turks used to speak Turkish only. But then languages mixed, grammars mixed, tenses mixed and everything was a mess.

During Ottoman days literature, reading and writing wasn't ment to be for the public so they made it even more artificial and complicated on purpose.

There was a huge vocabulary and 3 times more suffixes that nobody could manage easily.

You need to understand that we build words from roots in Turkish. If you know the root then you can understand even the academical terms.

example:
bağ : tie, cord, string (this is the thing that you do make when you connect to ends of a rope)

bağlı: connected
bağımlı : dependent
bağlantılı : in relation with
bağımsız : independent
bağlaç : conjunction
bağlılık : faith
bağlantı: connection
bağlantısız : unattached
bağlamak : to tie

In Ottoman days the Palace and the public were devided permanently. They had different music, different art, different language, everything was different. Things like education and language wasn't for the ordinary citizens.

Another big problem was religion and traditions. Language has a huge effect on thinking. We think within the language. If you don't have the terms in your mind then you can't think. Try thinking analytically without words. Can you? All the terms in Ottoman langauge belonged to a traditional understanding of the World. They were full with secondary meanings and influences with religion.

Foreigners can never understand how Easterns think. Easterns don't think critically or analytically because of they have another way of thinking. The existense or terms in middle east languages is fundementally unsuitable to analytical thinking.

There was an artificial language that was rich but only with the terms for entertainment for the palace. Some intellectual pleasure can be gained in these details of Ottoman Language I agree. There are some sophisticated and tempting things related to its art and literature etc.

But the thing is that Ottoman Empire colapsed and after it collapsed why would the Turks keep the Ottoman language instead using Turkish?

Greetings bod,
There is no such verb conjugation as -esi .It is incorrectly listed on winmekmak.

I have suggested Per Brännström to correct this mistake. I think it will be removed on next version. Per is curently working on the update.

The mistake was because of Geoffrey Lewis's book on Turkish grammar. He mixed up a verbal noun with a conjugation.

There are examples like "kör olası" etc. All these are adjectives. They are adjectives made from verbs. Therefore we call them verbal adjectives. Lewis mixed them with verb conjugations because in daily speech the noun that follows the adjective is usually dropped.

Lewis heard ordinary Turks saying :
"Kör olası" (blind becomingly, the one that shall becoe blind)
"kahr olası" (cursingly, damn, the one that shall be cursed)
"lanet olası" (cursingly, damn, the one that shall be cursed)

He asked what it was and they said it was cursing. So incorrectly he translated this like this:

"Kör olası" : May he/she/it become blind."
"lanet olası" : May he/she/it be cursed."

Now they look like full sentences and normal tenses.

Winmekmak, following lewis' example has again incorrectly suggested this:

"o ol-ası : May he/she/it become (cursing)"
(try olmak in -esi tense in winmekmak)

But these are incorrect. Olası is not a verb conjugation as it was suggested. It is an adjective that modifies a noun:

"kör olası adam" : the man who shall be blind

The poeple who were using it were just saying "that damn man", "that blood man" and "that man who shall become bling". It is not a full sentense.

In daily speech they dropped the "man" (adam) and just said "kör olası". This is the correct translation:

"kör olası" : the one that shall be blind

It is common to add passive. So we have:
"o gör-ül-esi"

Again this is not a sentence. It does not translate as "
he/she /it should be seen"

the correct translations is "that viewable"

another example:
sev-il-esi : that loveable

Anyway, you should use imperative of tamir etmek in passive.
Open program press F3 and type "edilsin" it will correctly show you what it is.

This is a verb conjugation: (imperative third person)

"lanet olsun" : Damn this. or > Let this be damn.
"kör olsun" : Let him be blind.
"gebersin" : let him die like a dog.
"tamir edilsin" : let it be repaired

These are verbal adjectives: (-esi)

"geberesi" : the (something) that shall be die like a dog
"lanet olası" : that damn (something)

-esi builds verbal adjectives:

Görülesi bir yer burası.
This is a viewable place. (a place that deserves to be viewed)

Lanet olası adam bütün paramı aldı.
That damn man took all my money.

Geoffrey Lewis's book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0199256691/202-0081509-2899036?v=glance&n=266239

He is know with his views opposite critics against our language reform and against Atatürk. In this book he argues that we should have left all the Arabic words and tenses, suffixes etc. He suggests that our language reform wasn't a great success.

I think the language reform was the biggest success in Turkish history for the last 800 years.

I have read an article by Geoffrey Lewis and he totally misunderstood everything.

Yes they have different type of personal suffixes. There are 4 types of personal suffixes.

This is the "-erek, -arak" gerund. It builds verbal adverbs.


1. fırçalayarak : by brushing
2. dans ederek : by dancing
3. oturarak : by sitting
4. çalarak : by playing


1. open this page:
http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTitle_6_1448
2. download the program listed on 21
3. start the program
4. press F3 on your keyboard and type fırçalayarak and hit enter. The program will show you correctly the tense, suffixes and the translation.

Of course it will recognize any other conjugation as well.
Bye.

The dictionary should work now for Turkish characters. Double clicking on köpek, uçak etc. works for me.

"Well" has many different usages in English but those examples you gave would be best met with "aslında" or "sanrım", I think.

well, i like juice better than cola.
Aslında, meyve suyunu koladan daha çok seviyorum.

Well,i love to eat burger
Aslında, hamburgeri çok severim.

Well,,, i guess i'm starting to get hungry
Sanırım karnım acıkmaya başladı.
Aslında karnım da acıkmaya başladı.

I agree with "bütün" (all, whole) in the other translation. It suits better than "her" (every).