The final day of Conversational Turkish in 7 Days covers general conversational topics. For instance, occupations (meslekler). I went over fairly quickly how agreement of pronouns and case endings works, but this is a good point at which to look in a little more detail. The Turkish word for 'to be' is imek. Imek's conjugation for present tense is like so:
Ben im : I am
Sen sin : You (familiar, singular) are
o dur : He/she/it is
biz iz : We are
siz siniz : You (formal or plural) are
onlar dırlar : They are
This is directly relevant to case endings, because you use the conjugations for 'to be' as case endings (allowing for vowel harmony). This takes some getting used to, but is wonderfully logical. So, for instance, to say 'I am an Englishman', you say, Ben bir İngilizim. The -im links the object with the appropriate pronoun (ben); it does the same thing (with some additional complications) with verbs. This carries over to discussion of occupations. Some examples:
Ben bir mühendisim : I am an engineer
Ben bir doktorum : I am a doctor
Ben bir müdürüm : I am a manager
O bir diş doktorudur : He/She is a dentist
Eşim bir bankada çalışıyorudur : My spouse works at a bank
Siz bir hastahanede çalışıyoruz : You work at a hospital
If you want to ask what someone else's occupation is, you say, Sizin mesleğiniz nedir?
Weather is also a universal chatting topic. To ask what the weather is like, you say, Hava nasıl? Various possible answers:
Hava sıcaktır : It is hot
Hava güneşli : It is sunny
Hava rüzgarlı : It is windy
Hava bulutlu : It is cloudy
Hava yağmurlu : It is rainy
Hava karlı : It is snowy
Yağmur yağıyor : It is raining
Kar yağıyor : It is snowing
Yağmur yağacak : It will rain
Kar yağacak : It will snow
Another way to chat is comment on hobbies. Since hobbies are ongoing activities, they tend to use the aorist -rim in first person, e.g.:
Golf ayarım : I play golf
Ben piyano çalarım : I play piano
Piyano dersleri alırım : I take piano lessons
Resim çizerim : I draw
Well, I haven't given everything, just little samples of the lessons, and anyway I'm sure you wouldn't be fluent in seven days, although, if you are a more adept conversationalist than I, you might be able to stumble your way through basic conversation. But it does make a handy way to see how the language works.
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Tayfun and Gillian Çağa, Conversational Turkish in 7 Days, Passport Books (Chicago: 1992).
