Turkish is not an Indo-European language. Meaning English has less in common with Turkish than it does with French or German or Spanish. Less than it does with Welsh or Punjabi. Thus few Turkish words seem obvious to an English speaker the way Germanic or Romance language words might. Except of course for the odd borrowed term. When, twenty-three years ago, we first came to North Cyprus we took a bus across the south of Türkiye to Taşucu to catch the ferry. The driver wanted to know where in Taşucu we wanted to alight. We said we wanted to take the ferry. Ah, feribot! And much discussion amongst the passengers on the best stop for us.
One of the most disconcerting aspects of the Turkish language is the lack of gender specific pronouns. There is no difference in Turkish between he and she. Not really a problem in itself. The difficulty comes in translating from the Turkish. Like the Chinese students I taught many years ago, Turkish people sometimes choose the wrong English pronoun with confusing or even startling results. These days a computer program may have done the choosing with little concern for effect.
Hence a news item in Gündem Kıbrıs that reads “He pushed his mother down with whom he was arguing, causing his nose to break!” [exclamation mark theirs]
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