Turkish 101: Four Idioms You Need to Know

If you have been living in Turkey long enough, surely you speak enough survival Turkish to get by in everyday life. However, every now and then there are some situations where basic Turkish doesn’t suffice, whether you want to impress that Turkish girl you just met at the bar or you want to look cool in your Turkish class. So here are four fun Turkish idioms that will help you carry your Turkish skills to the next level.

Keçileri Kaçırmak

Once upon a time there was a shepherd. He would take the goats to the same spot everyday where they could eat grass. One day he was very tired and he happened to fall asleep under a tree while the goats were feeding. When he woke up the goats were not there anymore. He searched all over, but he couldn’t find them. He ran to the village and to everyone he saw on his way he kept screaming “Keçileri kaçırdım!” – I lost the goats. Village folk decided to help him find the goats. When they got back to the spot where he claimed to have lost them, they realized that the goats were not lost, they were there. They had simply gone down to the river to get water and came back. So the village folk decided that the shepherd had gone mad.

Since then, this idiom is used to say that someone has gone mad.

Keçi: Goat
Keçiler: Goats
Kaçırmak: To lose
Literal Meaning: Losing the goats
In English: To go bananas
How you can use it: “Keçileri kaçırmış” – He has gone bananas / mad.

Ateş Almaya Gelmek

Back when there were no matches nor lighters, people would have to go to their neighbor with a shovel to ask for a bit of fire, usually in the form of burning coal or wood. Once they received the fire, they would have to rush to get home before the fire would extinguish.

Nowadays Turks still use this expression if a neighbor / friend knocks on their door to ask for something and then quickly departs instead of stepping in for a bit of chat.

Ateş: Fire; Light
Almak: To get; To buy
Gelmek: To come
Literal Meaning: Coming over just for a light
In English: To just drop by for a moment
How you can use it: “Ateş almaya mı geldin?” – Are you just dropping by?

Dağdan Gelip Bağdakini Kovmak

Once upon a time, a villager was weeding out the shrubbery and couch grass on a mountain to make space for himself to grow some fruits. After weeding them out, he forgot to throw the remains away and the wind carried these weeds down the slope to a big, fruitful vineyard. As couch grass is a type of grass that does not need much care to grow wherever without effort, it ended up growing there in the vineyard. When the owner of the garden found couch grass all over his garden, he got pissed off. He murmured to himself while weeding out the couch grass, “You came from the mountains and tried to expel my grapes.”

This idiom is still used to mention some newcomer trying to destroy everything / people that have been around for ages.

Dağ: Mountain
Dağdan: From the mountain
Gelip: Upon coming (gelmek)
Bağ: Yard, garden
Bağdaki: The one in the yard / garden
Kovmak: Expel; dismiss
Literal Meaning: To come from the mountains to expel the one in the gardens
In English: To come ruin or change things negatively despite having just arrived
How you can use it: “Dağdan gelip bağdakini kovamazsın!” – You can’t expel me out of the blue!

Pabucu Dama Atılmak

During the Ottoman Empire, there was a committee responsible for quality control to prevent manufacturers from producing defective products with lesser quality materials. If you had bought a pair of shoes and they were defective, you would go to the committee and the committee would listen to your concern as well as to the manufacturer before deciding who is right. If you were right, you would be refunded and the defective shoes were thrown on the roof of the manufacturer’s place of business for customers to evaluate the quality before buying. The more shoes on the roof meant the less quality products the manufacturer would produce, thus the less customers they’d receive and they would fall out of favor.

This idiom is still used to mean that someone is not the favorite anymore.

Pabuç: Shoes
Dam: Roof
Atmak: To throw
Atılmak: To be thrown
Literal Meaning: One’s shoes are thrown to the rooftop
In English: To fall out of favor
How you can use it: “Pabucum dama atılmış.” – I fell out of favor.

Let us know in the comments of any other idioms you love or how else we can use these idioms in sentence!

This article was originally published on June 6, 2018, by Selcen Ciftlikci.