Lesson 3 — How Many, Which One, and When

1How many? The question word kaç

kaç turned up in Lesson 2 inside the question about age, and we promised it a section of its own. Here it is. kaç means “how many”, and it asks about quantity: how many glasses, how many people, how many days.

The question is built from parts you already have: a place with its -da ending, then kaç, then the thing itself, and var at the end. One frame, every time.

And now the nicest thing that will happen to you today. English says “three glasses” and changes the word. Turkish changes nothing: the number has already said there’s more than one, so there’s no point saying it twice with -lar. After any number — and after kaç — the noun stays singular.

Your hand will still reach for -lar — everyone’s does. The check is simple: if there’s a number in front of the word, the ending isn’t needed. Don’t worry if for the first couple of weeks you only catch it after the fact.

People often slip the word tane in between the number and the thing — roughly “items” or “of them”. It doesn’t change the meaning, it sounds a touch more colloquial, and the noun still stays singular.

And one more use that throws people at first: kaç sometimes comes out as “what” — but only where the answer is going to be a number.

Spotted the -ın inside numaran? That’s a possessive ending, “your” — it gets Lesson 7 to itself, so for now just learn the phrase whole. Same with “Saat kaç?”: you can ask the time today, but we’ll take Turkish clocks apart in Lesson 11.

2Bigger numbers

In Lesson 2 you got as far as a thousand. There isn’t much further to go — there are only two rules, and both of them are good news.

First: biggest part first, smallest last, and nothing goes in between. No “and”, no hyphens, no special forms.

Second: yüz and bin already mean “a hundred” and “a thousand” on their own — you don’t put bir in front of them. milyon, on the other hand, insists on its bir. That is the only bump in the whole system.

Now let’s build something more substantial. You read it straight through, left to right, exactly as it’s written — and you take it apart the same way.

Phone numbers get read out in groups rather than as one enormous number — same as we do. Two zeros in a row often become a single word: çift sıfır, “double zero”.

Say any of these out loud twice in a row. The second time through, the digits stop being a list and turn into a word — which is roughly how they land on a Turkish ear.

3The days of the week

Seven words — but there’s less to learn here than it looks. You practically know one of them already: pazar from last lesson is both “market” and “Sunday”. One word doing two jobs, and market day has nothing to do with it — that’s just how it settled.

Then comes the trick that removes two more. Ertesi means “the next one”, “the day after”. Stick it onto pazar and you get Pazartesi, “the day after Sunday” — Monday. Exactly the same thing happens with Friday.

That leaves three: Salı, Çarşamba, Perşembe. They came in from Arabic and Persian, and each one has a number hidden inside it: Salı is “third”, Çarşamba “fourth”, Perşembe “fifth”. The counting started on Saturday. Completely useless knowledge — and somehow it sticks better than the words themselves.

To say “on Monday” you add nothing at all: the day works as its own adverb. Pazartesi is both “Monday” and “on Monday”. One of the rare places where Turkish sticks nothing onto anything.

A word about capitals. Strictly speaking, days and months take a capital letter when there’s a date beside them — “25 Haziran”. Elsewhere lower case is allowed too. In practice you’ll see capitals far more often, so that’s what we use; nothing breaks either way.

4Months and seasons

There are twelve months, and there are fewer tricks here — most of them you simply learn. The consolation is that three turn out to be ordinary Turkish words you’ll meet again later with no calendar in sight.

And you probably recognised Mart, Mayıs and Ağustos without any help: they have the same Latin ancestry ours do.

There are four seasons, and two of them are assembled from parts you can see: ilk is “first”, son is “last”, bahar is “spring”. So ilkbahar is the “first spring” and sonbahar is the “last” one. Autumn as spring, running the other way.

Months are proper names, so the locative ending hangs off them after an apostrophe, just like İstanbul’da last lesson. And do check that last consonant: Şahap and his pistachios are still on duty.

5Which one exactly? The question word hangi

Today’s second question word is hangi — “which”. It splits the work with kaç very cleanly: kaç asks how many there are, hangi asks which one of the ones there already are. There are seven days in a week, and “which of the seven” is exactly hangi’s job.

hangi behaves like an ordinary adjective: it stands in front of the noun and never changes shape. No endings, no vowel harmony — take the afternoon off.

Here are the four question words side by side. The difference shows up best on one and the same object:

And now nine phrases where the whole lesson comes together at once: a question, a number, a place and var. The translations are hidden — have a go first, then open them. Peeking still doesn’t count against you.

7Dialogue: a week with nothing free in it

Can is trying to find a day when Ayşe is free. Ayşe works conscientiously through the week. Mustafa is the local çaycı, and he turns up at precisely the right moment. Listen to the whole thing first, for the intonation, then take it line by line.

8Reading

Your third Turkish text — and again with no verb tense anywhere. It all rests on personal endings, the locative, var and yok. The only new machinery in it is today’s: days of the week, numbers without -lar, and the question hangi.

Deniz moved in back in Lesson 1, lost his key in Lesson 2, and by Lesson 3 has acquired neighbours and a schedule. Listen to it whole first, without peeking. Then go through it line by line.

9The lesson’s new words

The days, months and seasons have stayed up in their own tables, where they’re easier to reread as whole sets. Everything else the lesson brought in is here, in the order it appeared. The meanings are out in the open: this isn’t a test, it’s the page you glance at when you get stuck.

10Check yourself

Six items. Half of them are about today’s rule with -lar, half about the calendar. Getting one wrong is still free: a miss shows you the right answer anyway.

11Homework

The calendar is that rare material you learn on the move rather than at a desk. Almost everything below can be done out loud on the way somewhere.