Travel and Tourist Transactions

Gişede

Almost every question a traveller asks is really the same question: is there one? Is there a room, is there a ticket, is there a bus at six. English needs four or five words for that. Turkish needs two, and one of them is the answer as well as the question. Learn those two words and you can hold a transaction on your first day.

Travel words in Turkish

Six words a traveller needs. Two more you can already read: pasaport and otel mean exactly what they look like, so they are worth knowing but not worth testing.

Match each word to its meaning

var and yok

var means there is, or there exists. yok means there is not. They are not two halves of a verb. yok is its own word, and either one on its own is a complete answer: ask Boş oda var mı? and you will hear back Var. or Yok. To turn var into a question, put mı after it: var mı? That is the whole trick. Turkish has no word for "a" and needs no word for "is", so boş oda var is, word for word, *free room exists*.

What is being asked?

You arrive at a small hotel and ask: Boş oda var mı? What have you said?

• Is there a free room?
• I would like to pay for a room
• Where is my room?
• The room is empty

The rule

Turkish says _____ for "there is" and _____ for "there is not". To make it a question you add _____ after var. So "Is there a ticket?" is _____, and a shopkeeper who has none simply answers _____.

Longer in English

One more thing worth knowing before you use it. yok is not the same as hayır. hayır is "no" as a refusal. yok means "there is not any of it" - which is the answer you will actually get in a shop, and it is not rude.

Order the exchange

Put a short hotel transaction into a sensible order.

• Ask whether they have one: Boş oda var mı?
• They answer: Var.
• Ask the price: Kaç para?
• Hand over the para
• Take the anahtar for your oda

Which are right?

Select the TWO sentences that are correct Turkish.

• Bilet var mı? for "Is there a ticket?"
• Oda yok. for "There are no rooms."
• Oda değil var. for "There are no rooms."
• Bir bilet var mı? where bir is needed to mean "a"

Otelde

You are at a hotel and then at the ticket window. Choose the right Turkish each time.

• You want to know whether they have a free room. What do you say?
• The answer is Yok. What have you been told?
• At the gişe you want to know what a ticket costs. What do you ask?

Tickets and keys in Turkish

A ticket is _____ and a key is _____. The word for free or not taken is _____. To ask how much something costs you say _____. And the word a shopkeeper uses to tell you they have run out is _____, which is not the same as saying no.

Finding a room for the night

Write in English about arriving somewhere new and needing a room for the night. Say what you had to ask and what you were told, and explain how Turkish handles "there is" and "there is not".

• Say where you were and what you needed
• Give the question you had to ask, in Turkish, and what it means word for word
• Explain what var and yok do, and why a one-word answer is a complete one
• Say why yok is not the same as hayır, and why that matters in a shop