Getting around in Kurdish
Left, right, the station, one ticket, where is the toilet. Play the ten Kurdish words against the clock, with a note on how locals really use each one after every answer. All ten are written out below.
All 10 Kurdish phrases in this lesson
- Tuwalet li ku ye?tu-wa-LET li KU ye
- Where is the toilet?
- Ez çawa biçim ...?ez cha-WA bi-CHIM
- How do I get to...?
- Ber bi çepêber bi che-PE
- To the left
- Ber bi rastêber bi ras-TE
- To the right
- rasterastras-te-RAST
- Straight ahead
- li virli VIR
- Here
- stasyona trênêstas-yo-NA tre-NE
- Train station
- otobêso-to-BES
- Bus
- Balafirgehba-la-FIR-geh
- Airport
- Bilêtek bidinbi-le-TEK bi-DIN
- One ticket, please
The loanword is what everyone says and every sign shows; destavxane (des-tav-KHA-ne) is the Kurdish word if you want it. Mosques, restaurants and petrol stations are the reliable options.
Literally "toward the left".
Literally "right-right". Expect directions to arrive fast and with a lot of hand: the pointing carries as much information as the words do.
Li is the preposition for at or in, and it attaches to most locations: li malê (at home), li Amedê (in Diyarbakir, by its Kurdish name).
Rail is thin on the ground in Kurmanji-speaking areas and buses are almost always the better option. Note the feminine ezafe -a on stasyona, linking the noun to what follows.
Long-distance coaches are excellent and cheap across the region. For shorter hops the workhorse is the shared minibus, called a dolmuş in Türkiye, which leaves when it is full rather than when a timetable says so.
Literally "plane place".
The same -ek and bidin pattern as the ordering lesson. On a shared minibus there is no ticket at all: you pass the fare forward, hand to hand, until it reaches the driver.