The Turkish Language

The national language in Turkey is Turkish. It is written with latin letter, so you can read everything, only understanding is another thing. There are some special characters, which are not displayed correctly in the normal Windows character set. On these webpages I don't use these letters, even though some of the Turkish words are therefore misspelled. They are the letters C and S with a kind of comma beneath and a G with a checkmark over it. As in German they have the O and U with two dots above (but not the a with dots). And most difficult for us is the letter i without the dot, on Turkish keybords located where our regular i is. That always gives problems if you use Turkish keybords for entering the internet and your password has an i (with dot) in it.

In the hotels and shops in and around Kemer many people speak at least some bits of foreign languages. And the best is they can fairly well estimate, which country a possible customer comes from and address him in the proper language. But quiet often all this "Hello, my friend, how are you? Want to see some leather, gold, carpets, T-Shirts....?" is just getting on ones nerves.

English is tought in the schools as the most common foreign language but the communication skills are not very good. It is always recommended to learn a few phrases in Turkish to get along better. And the Turkish people are ever so pleased if someone knows some Turkish. Get a small dictionary for more words and the proper pronounciation. Here are only the very basic phrases: