Posts under ‘Word of the Day’

Tapchan (top-chahn)
Language: Uzbek
Meaning: Raised platform for eating, sleeping, relaxing, etc.
The Tapchan is a central piece of furniture for every Uzbek household.  Traditional Uzbek houses have open courtyards where there might be a home garden and some animals.  There is also inevitably a tandyr (mud, wood-fired oven) and a tapchan.  The tapchan is a raised daise [...]

Vişne (veesh-neh)
Language: Turkish
Meaning: Cherry
It’s the beginning of cherry season in the US and they’re beginning to filter into the farmer’s markets to sweeten our lives, but none are so sweet as the cherries in northeastern Turkey.  The Black Sea region of Turkey, close to Georgia is famous for four foods: bread (ekmek), tea (çay), hazelnuts [...]

birinci (beer-een-jee)
Language: Turkish
Meaning: First
The ending -inci indicates position, but how you add this ending to a number depends on vowel harmony and the form of the number;  That is to say, it’s irregular but still pretty intuitive.  So the first ten numbers are bir (beer), iki (ee-kee), üç (ieuch), dört (deurt), beş (besh), altı (altuh), [...]

Su (Soo)
Language: Turkish, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kazakh, etc
Meaning: Water
Water is important to people everywhere, as such, the word su comes up a lot.   Su is a common drink and occassionally you might be asked whether you want water for tourists or for locals.  If you choose the for-tourists water then you may, as happened to me [...]

Pakhta (pahkh-tah)
Language: Uzbek
Meaning: Cotton
Sometimes also written Paxta, cotton is an important word in Uzbekistan.  In the 1920’s when the Soviet Union gained a firm grip over Central Asia, they decided that, by setting up a massive irrigation scheme, Uzbekistan could produce almost all the cotton and wheat needed to make the Soviet empire self-sufficient.  Then [...]

Jagoda (yah-goh-dah)
Language: Serbo-Croatian
Meaning: Strawberry
It’s strawberry season!  My new favorite strawberries are Camarosa strawberries which taste so much more like strawberries than others you get.  I happen to know the word Strawberry in Serbo-Croatian because of the movie Jagoda u Supermarketu (strawberries in the supermarket), a movie produced by Emir Kusturica and directed by Dusan Milic [...]

Var (vahr)
Language: Turkish
Meaning: There is/are
It’s really easy to sound at first glance like you know how to speak Turkish.  The absolute staple of Turkish is var.  If you are looking for anything, you can just say “[Thing you are looking for] var mı?” and the Turk will probably answer “var” or “yok” (there are or [...]

Yaasan üntei yum be! (yah-sahn ieun-tay yoom beh)

Language: Mongolian
Meaning: That’s very expensive!
When I heard the alternator was going to be €355, I thought “that’s very expensive!” so I enlisted Dad’s help and acquired us an alternator at a mere £50 from a car parts recycler in Wales.  Great work!  But, on the road, we will [...]

Alacakaranlık (ah-lah-jah-kah-rahn-luk)
Language: Turkish
Meaning: Twilight
At the request of my office-mate, today’s word of the day is Twilight (her initial request was “fuzzy,” but I vetoed that one).  The most beautiful word in most languages (aside from Bat, in my opinion), it makes everything feel a bit melancholy and romantic, she says.  That’s the time of day [...]

Yağmur (yah-moor)
Language: Turkish
Meaning: Mud
Although it’s always sunny and 75 here in Santa Monica, in many places around the country it’s spring and spring means rain and rain means mud.  Mud is a central theme of a lot of Turkish songs, especially from the East.  My favorite features a young eligible shepherdess getting stuck in the [...]