Turkish Animals

On my recent trip to Turkey it seems that the cat is king. Every hotel has a 'clowder' of cats that ply the hotel rooms looking for tit-bits, and occasionally harass the restaurants. In fact, my first morning reception committee at the hotel consisted of six cats who soon made their home on my balcony and quickly settled onto my sofa... There were dogs too, mostly near the Beach Shacks and sunbeds. They all seemed well fed and friendly. Kedi is an Arabic loan word and köpek is surely a cognate to соба́ка in Russian.

Duolingo of course teaches Turkish animals quite early in the course.

aslan	lion
at	horse
ayı	bear
balık	fish
baykuş	owl
fare	mouse
fil	elephant
hindi	turkey
inek	cow
kaplumbağa	turtle
kedi	cat
köpek	dog
koyun	sheep
kurbağa	frog
kuş	bird
kuzu	lamb
ördek	duck
örümcek	spider
tavşan	rabbit
tavuk	chicken
yengeç	crab

Some of these words appear frequently on menus and the food you'll find in supermarkets: balık, hindi, kuzu, tavuk.

It is very interesting to note the use of hindi for turkey, just as the French call it 'la dinde' - literally 'from India'. I might do a blog just on the etymology of turkeys...

Also on this list appear two chess pieces... Have you found them? At is the knight in Turkish chess; fil is the bishop. Other pieces in Turkish chess are: şah = shah (king), vezir = vizier (queen), kale = fort (rook), piyon = from French 'pion' (pawn). It appears that Turkish women don't lead troops onto the battlefield.

Near to Bodrum in South-western Turkey were two day trip destinations: Turtle Beach (Kaplumbağa Plajı) and Rabbit Island (Tavşan Adası). There is also a Camel Beach, but I didn't see that named in Turkish, but only as a tourist trap for boat trippers expected to pay loads for a 5 minute camel ride.

Kaplumbağa and kurbağa share a common stem. The turtle is the 'covered frog' and the frog itself might come from 'coal frog'. Bağa is not used on its own.

The name of Aslan (lion) is familiar to many people familiar with the CS Lewis children's books. There are other references to Turkey in the books: the Turkish delight that Edmund receives from the White Witch and the Calormenes in the Last Battle are clearly inspired by the Ottomans.

My Duolingo Level #2

Here are my Duolingo Levels on November 4th 2018

You can find me on Duolingo HERE.

The highest climber this month has been TURKISH, as I had a two week blitz on learning before taking my first holiday there last week. I've also resumed learning CATALAN again. I shall try to finish that tree, then go back to the Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Swedish and Danish) again.

I have finished the GERMAN and SPANISH trees but will continue to raise my Level in both.

There are also two NEW languages! HAWAIIAN and NAVAJO. Both are very short learning courses in beta mode, but certainly challenging. More info on those soon...

I'm on a 10 day streak. I never bothered before about streaks, but now I'm aiming for a 100 day streak so I can see how the duome.eu website works for me.

15 French (FINISHED)
15 Spanish (FINISHED)
15 German (FINISHED)
14 Hindi (FINISHED)
14 Catalan (from Spanish)
14 Esperanto
14 Portuguese
14 Italian
14 Welsh
13 Turkish
10 Japanese
10 Czech
10 Swahili
10 Russian
10 Ukrainian
10 Danish
10 Greek
10 Norwegian
10 Indonesian
10 Polish
10 Chinese
10 Dutch
10 Swedish
9 Hawaiian
9 English (from Hindi)
8 Irish
7 Romanian
6 Hebrew
6 Portuguese (from Spanish)
6 Korean
6 Guarani
5 High Valyrian
5 Navajo
3 Hungarian