Like a Stone on My Chest

Lesson 1 | Listening Practice
-iyor mu

Now that we've learned the present tense in Lesson 1, I'd like to highlight some ways we can use it with question words.

To make a verb interrogative, simply add a -mi ending (conforms to vowel harmony) and a pronoun affix. For example, to make the verb "biliyorsun" or "you know" interrogative, change it to "biliyor musun" meaning "do you know".

Here is an example:

Declaritive	Meaning	Interrogative	Meaning
Ben biliyorum	I know	Biliyor muyum?	Do I know?
Sen biliyorsun	You know	Biliyor musun?	Do you know?
O biliyor	He/She/It knows	Biliyor mu?	Does he/she/it know?
Biz biliyoruz	We know	Biliyor muyuz?	Do we know?
Siz biliyorsunuz	You know	Biliyor musunuz?	Do you know?
Onlar biliyor(lar)	They know	Biliyor(lar) mı?	Do they know?

In this song, our singer Esmeray (to learn more, see Lesson 17) asks the one she admires a series of questions. Try to follow along to see how questions work and pick up some useful vocabulary along the way.

A comment on the titular phrase, "soruyor musun" which literally means "are you asking" or "do you ask". Of course, this doesn't make a lot of sense in English. For some reason, this ever so slightly idiomatic use of the verb "sormak (to ask)" eludes an easy translation. But the meaning she is trying to convey is something like "do you wonder?" or "do you care?" or even "just think about it". In other words, she is telling the guy something like don't you get it, don't you want to know, don't you care that she's interested in you? And by she I mean me.

Verbs

dilemek - to wish
bilmek - to know
görmek - to see
sormak - to ask
durmak - to stand, to stop

Rüyaların gerçekleşsin diliyor musun
Are you wishing that your dreams come true?
Onun da sevdiği sensin biliyor musun
Do you know that you're the one she loves too?

Seni gördüğünden beri uykusuzmuş geceleri
Her nights have been sleepless since she first saw you
Sana vurulmuş besbelli / soruyor musun
She's smitten with you, it's so clear, don't you want to know?
Seni gördüğünden beri uykusuzmuş geceleri
Her nights have been sleepless since she first saw you
Karasevda o besbelli / soruyor musun
It's so clear that she's hopelessly obsessed, don't you want to know?

"Karasevda" basically refers to a passionate but unrequited love that leads to depression.

Görüyormuş düşlerinde, haberin olsun
She saw [you] in her dreams, just so you know
Sen varsın gözyaşlarında / görmüyor musun?
You're inside her tears, don't you see?
Gözleri gel diyor sana, haydi durma koş yanına
Her eyes are saying "come" to you, don't just stand there, run to her
Çağırıyor da sen hala duruyor musun?
She's calling [you], are you still standing there?
Gözleri gel diyor sana, şaşkın şaşkın bakmasana
Her eyes are saying "come" to you, don't just look back dumbfounded
Çağırıyor da sen hala duruyor musun?

Biliyorum gideceksin gelmeyeceksin
I know, you will go, and you won't come back
İçimi bir bilsen böyle gülmeyeceksin
If only you knew what was inside me, you wouldn't laugh like that

Ne kadar gitse ağrıma, dayanırım kalp ağrıma
No matter how much it hurts, I will endure the pain in my heart
Taş bassam da ben bağrıma bilmeyeceksin
Even if [your absence] is like a stone on my chest, you will never know

Here the phrase "taş bağrına basmak" literally means "to press a stone on one's chest" or metaphorically to bear the feeling of longing due to someone's absence.

Ne kadar gitse ağrıma, dayanırım kalp ağrıma
Taş bassam da ben bağrıma bilmeyeceksin

Let Me Be Your Hiccup

Kellen Waits (Image Source: Chris Gratien)

Lesson 17 | -ken While

Esmeray circa 1970s (Source: uludağsözlük)

In English, we combine independent clauses using conjunctions such as "and" or conjunctive adverbs such as "while". Turkish, as we've already seen in a few songs, does possess such conjunctions such as "ve (and)". But the more common way of joining sentences is using grammatical endings. In Lesson 13, we learned about -erek, which means while. In the last lesson, we learned an adverbial form that performs a similar function in words like "seve seve" and "bile bile". Here we have two means of expressing a similar meaning through the endings of -ken and -ince.

The singer in this lesson is Esmeray. She was another of the iconic singers of the 1970s period that has featured so regularly in our lessons this far. She was also one of the most recognizable pop culture figures of the Afro-Turk community, people spread throughout Turkey most of whom trace their descent to the legacy of the Ottoman slave trade.

The song, "Unutama Beni (Don't Be Able to Forget Me)", is one of her first singles released on 45 during the 1970s and one of the most famous. After she passed away in 2002, one ekşisözlük reader endearingly joked that she was "a nice woman" but "someone who is still greatly respected even though the number of victims driven to suicide by her song 'Unutama Beni' is at least 10 times that of [Murat] Kekilli" and therefore "the one who pushed me to deep thoughts on the subject of society's hypocrisy." In other words, "Unatama Beni", unforgettable as it may be, is one of those many classic love songs that veers dangerously towards self-destructive and psychopathic obsession. But in a good way, right?

In this lesson, I'd like to highlight a few grammar points, some of which we will deal with later at greater length. The first is the ending -ken, which comes from the word "iken" and can be added to the end of any verb to convey the meaning of "while/when". In the last verse of this song, -ken is added to the end of a number of -ir verbs (see Lesson 14). She says:

Sevişirken, öpüşürken
Yapayalnız dolaşırken
Unutmaya çalışırken
Unutama beni

You can find the translation below or figure out the meaning on your own using the vocab list, but what I want to highlight here is that although the subject of the verbs "sevişirken" and "çalışırken" and the like is "you" or "sen", there is no verbal pronoun ending on these verbs. We only understand the person of the subject from the imperative verb at the end of the sentence: "unutama" or "don't be able to forget."

In another verse, we have a similar function represented by the -ince, which means "while", "as", "when", or "by". It appears in the following line:

Ayrılığın acısını kalbinde duyunca unutma beni.

As you can see, -ince is added directly to the stem of the verb "duymak" meaning "to feel" or "to hear", also without an affix marking person. The -ince ending will be covered at greater length in Lesson 29.

This song also features two notable examples of a rare prefix in the Turkish language. One of the more unique features of Turkish is this intensifier prefixes that makes adjective more of whatever they are. In the song we have two words "kapkaranlık" and "yapayalnız" that bear this prefix. They are formed from the words "karanlık (darkness)" and "yalnız (lonely)". They carry the intensifiers "kap-" and "yapa" respectively. These are formed in imitation of the first syllable but don't have an exact pattern (you'll have to memorize them using this list). But the meanings they create are "pitch-darkness" and "all-alone". Note that both of these intensifier adjectives create meanings that we have special idiomatic ways of saying in English. This is true in many but not all cases of the intensifier adjective. For example, it's hard to find the perfect way of translating "bomboş" from "boş (empty)" or "besbelli" from "belli (clear)".

There are a few other interesting grammar points that will be good to memorize for now using this song and explore more deeply in subsequent lessons. For example, the verb "olayım" or "let me be" utilizes the -eyim ending covered in Lesson 19. Likewise, we'll learn about the grammatical difference between "unutma" and "unutama" in Lesson 25.

Vocabulary



öpüşmek - to make out, to kiss each other
çalışmak - to work
dolaşmak - to wander, to walk around

boğaz - throat
hıçkırık - hiccup, sob
göz yaşı - tear
gölge - shadow, shade
adım - step
soluk - breath, break
ad - name
karanlık - darkness
kapkaranlık - pitch-darkness
yalnız - alone
yapayalnız - all alone

Esmeray - Unutama Beni

Boğazında düğümlenen hıçkırık olayım
May I be the sob that gets caught in your throat 

Here we can see the meaning of "hıçkırık" or "hiccup" is the kind of hiccup you make when crying and sobbing.

Unutma beni, unutama beni
Do not forget me, don't be able to forget me
Gözünden damlayamayan göz yaşın olayım
May I be your tear that cannot drop from your eye
Unutma beni, unutama beni
Do not forget me, don't be able to forget me

Gölgen gibi adım adım
Like your shadow, step by step
Her solukta benim adım
My name in every breath 

"Ad-ım" or "my name" cleverly rhymes with the word "adım" meaning step.

Ben nasıl ki unutmadım
Like I didn't forget you
Sen de unutma beni, unutama beni
You don't forget me either, don't be able to forget me

Bitmek bilmez kapkaranlık geceler boyunca
Throughout the pitch dark nights that don't know how to end
Unutma beni, unutama beni
Do not forget me, don't be able to forget me
Ayrılığın acısını kalbinde duyunca
While you feel the pain of separation in your heart
Unutma beni, unutama beni
Do not forget me, don't be able to forget me

Sevişirken, öpüşürken
When you make love, when you kiss (someone)
Yapayalnız dolaşırken
When you wander all alone
Unutmaya çalışırken
When you try to forget
Unutama beni, unutama beni
Don't be able to forget me, don't be able to forget me

We won't be leaving these sappy old songs anytime soon. Before moving onto Lesson 18: Come Back in September, try to learn the vocabulary for this lesson using the exercise below.

Esmeray - 13,5

For more background on Esmeray and the context of the song, see this article by Kornelia Binicewicz

For more background on the Afro-Turk community, see this podcast with Michael Ferguson

English translation:

Verse 1

Children singing a rhyme: "It's raining, it's pouring / the Arab girl is looking from the window"

That "Arab" woman is me
(here Arab in Turkish signifies a black or dark-skinned person)
Curly haired, red lipped
Beady eyes, pearly-white teeth
A dark fate is written on my forehead
(meaning she is unfortunate, referring to the fact that she is destined to suffer maltreatment simply because of how she looks)

Chorus

Kids get scared and run away
They pinch themselves and say 13 and a half (on üç buçuk)
(this refers to a superstitious reaction to something bad or ominous, somewhat analogous to saying "knock on wood" in English)
So what if my color is dark
What matters is that my heart is not dark

Verse 2

"Oh no mommy, a boogie monster is coming"
If not a monster, then an "Arab" woman
That "Arab" woman has no right to live comfortably
She has no right to carry a heart
(this implies people don't think of her as human)

Esmeray - 13,5

Yağmur yağıyor, seller akıyor
Arap kızı camdan bakıyor

İşte benim Arap bacı
Saçlar kıvır kıvır, dudaklar kırmızı
Gözler boncuk boncuk, dişler inci dizi
Alnıma yazılmış bir kara yazı

Korkar kaçar çoluk çocuk
Bir çimdik 13,5
Rengim kara olsun varsın
Yeter ki kalbim kara olmasın

Anneciğim aman, geliyor öcü
Öcü değilse, Arap bacı
Bacının hakkı yok rahat yaşamaya
Bacının hakkı yok kalp taşımaya