10 signs of an early summer in Istanbul

Signs of early summer in Istanbul:

1. You leave the house at 9am to go to the park with no jackets for your children but with sunhats and suncream.
2. You leave the house at 9am to go to the park because even with sunhats and suncream, you'll want to be home and out of the direct sun by 11.30am.
3. You start hearing Romani musicians playing the accordian out on the street.
4. You decide it is acceptable to take your baby in the baby carrier or pushchair barefoot.
5. You start refrigerating drinking water at home.
6. Home made ice lollies are an acceptable snack at any time of day.
7. You make the move to sandals as your automatic footwear choice.
8. You still have the window open at 10pm.
9. You start making meal and baking decisions based on how long your oven/gas hobs will need to be on and how much heat they will emit into the house.
10. Your friends with balconies invite you and your kids over for the children to do water play outside together.

Turkish relatives

I've been revising my vocab for Turkish relatives recently. This may sound like something I should have learned already (and I probably should have). The truth is, I'm absolutely fine on immediate relatives - mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, child, brother, sister. Turkish is a little different from English in that there are different words for someone's older brother and younger brother, and the same for sisters. A person's place in their family is really important! 

Where it gets a little more complicated is referring to someone's uncles, aunts, brothers-in-laws, sisters-in-laws (on their side of the family). Whereas in English, a person's parents' siblings and their spouses are all 'uncle' or 'aunt', there is a different word in Turkish for aunt depending on whether she is (a) your father's sister, (b) your mother's sister, (c) your mother's or father's brother's wife. And the same for uncle as well of course. There is also a specific word for your sister-in-law (your brother's wife) and brother-in-law (your sister's husband).

So far so good. Where it gets really complicated though is when it comes to your spouse's family. First of all, some (but not all) of the titles change depending on whether you are the husband or wife. 

The diagrams help to explain it. You might wonder why this is important. Family, relationships, and positions to one another are really important in this culture because you have to show respect to those older or more senior than you. If you are talking about someone who is older or more senior than you to someone else, you'd probably use their first name and title together to convey respect for that person. Title comes after the name - except for doctors, where it is always Doctor [first name]. 

For example, if I was speaking about my aunt (my father's sister) to someone in Turkish who also knew her, I might refer to her as 'Rebecca Hala'. It is also perfectly accepted to call somebody older or more senior than by their 'title' rather than their name, much like we do in English with grandparent titles such as 'Granny' and 'Grandpa'.

A further confusing thing is that when talking to/about someone in your spouse's family, you may use the same term as your spouse to show greater respect, depending on the relationship. For example, older siblings should generally be respected by their younger siblings and called Abi (for boys) or Abla (for girls). Actually, some people will never use their older siblings' names when talking to them directly but will always call them Abi or Abla. So L would call his older brother Abi, or 'Dan Abi'. L would call Dan's wife Yenge (to show respect, as his older brother's wife). The technically correct term for me to use for Dan's wife would be Elti. But this doesn't distinguish her as L's older brother's wife - if L had a younger brother who was married, I would use Elti for her as well. So to show greater respect, I (like L) might use Yenge for Dan's wife. 

Confused yet?!

Just to complicate matters further, when talking to or about people who are not related to you but who are more senior/older than you should add Abi or Amca onto their first names (if they are a little older than you) or Amca or Teyze (for people roughly your parents' ages and upwards). Children should always call adults who are not related to them Amca or Teyze, either those words by themselves or added onto an adult's first name.

This has led to at least one slightly amusing scenario, where I was talking to L about a friend and called him 'M.... Abi'. J overheard this and corrected me, "M... Amca!". In J's head, this friend was an Amca no matter who was talking about him! 

It also leads to some interesting combinations of names of couples when we're talking to J about his friends' parents. J has several friends who have one Turkish parent (usually the dad) and one American parent (usually the mum). So it's quite common for J to talk about people such as 'S.... Amca and Aunty K'. 

The good news is that as I have no Turkish relatives, I can usually get by if I can understand (at least roughly) who is meant when someone in speaking in Turkish about their own relatives, and if necessary I can always describe a family member's relationship to me if I can't remember their name  and sometimes it's necessary to clarify who exactly I'm talking about anyway.

Two things for a Tuesday morning

Two slightly random things happened to me today.

The first one was that, while trying to push open the heavy front door to our apartment block (that swings shut by itself) at the same time as get the brake off the pushchair (with J inside) to bump it up the two steps to get the front door, with S strapped to my front in the baby carrier as well, the driver of a car that was going down the street in front of our house stopped his car, got out and ran around to help me get the pushchair inside. What an incredibly kind gesture.

The second was that the nurse from our health centre telephoned me and spoke to me in fast Turkish to tell me about something that had opened near to my house. I'm going to admit, I misheard and thought she was telling me that there was a closer health centre to my house (because in fact there is, and I knew that already). Then she sent me the details of what she was talking about on whatsapp (and the odd thing is that I don't even think its strange anymore that the nurse from a government-operated health centre should whatsapp me) and it was the details of a new kebab shop that has opened very close to our flat. I'm assuming that its a friend or family member who has opened the shop and it was kind of her to think of telling people who may live close by. But still, it was slightly random.

Have you had any random things happen to you today?