Turkish Family Ties
We all know about the cliche interview questions. My favorite is “Tell me about your weakness.” I mean who the hell would want to tell the person who could be his/her employer in the near future about his/her weakness. In a desperate attempt to avoid looking like a total loser we all try to bend and manipulate our answer to this very sensitive, unwelcoming, but extremely necessary question. So the test here becomes not the answer itself, but how well one turns around an extremely negative angle and presents it as something that can be fixed in no time.
Despite the fact that it doesn’t apply to any interview, my ideal answer to the weakness question would be “understanding and intelligently using family tie terms in Turkish.” It might look like an easy job from an English speaker’s point of view. We can all handle aunt, uncle, husband’s sister and wife’s sister pretty easily. Yet, things get a little more complicated in Turkish. Each term gets a separate name for the two sides of the family: mother/wife vs. father/husband.
Mother/Wife Side:
Aunt = Teyze
Uncle =Dayi
Wife’s Sister = Baldiz
Wife’s Brother = Kayin
Wife’s Sister’s Husband = Bacanak
Wife’s Mother = Kaynana
Father/Husband Side:
Aunt = Hala
Uncle = Amca
Husband’s Sister = Gorumce
Husband’s Mother = Kaynana
These are the few terms that I am aware of. I confess that it has been a nightmare to use them correctly and understand their meaning (especially when listening to someone who has already devoured all the terms and casually sprinkles each on sentences while talking about weddings and family).
resimdeki ailenin uyeleri gercekten very turkish
suleyman efendi degil mi su soldaki?
HAHAHA faruk amca ile zubeyda teyzeyi gordun umarim sag kosede.