LingoflyHow old is your nephew or niece? in Turkish
Neighbors talking about children and age in Turkish. 7 phrases that the conversation is made of: «Yeğenin kaç yaşında?» — How old is your nephew or niece?; «Beş yaşında, eylülde okula başlıyor.» — Five, and starting school in September. Every line can be played right on the page.
How the whole thing sounds
The situation: neighbors talking about children and age. First the whole conversation, then each line on its own, with a translation.
- Yeğenin kaç yaşında?How old is your nephew or niece?
- Beş yaşında, eylülde okula başlıyor.Five, and starting school in September.
- How sweet. A girl or a boy?
- How time flies. And how old are you?
- I'm thirty, but sometimes I feel sixty.
- Merak etme, hepimiz öyleyiz.Don't worry, we're all like that.
Lines one by one
| Turkish | Translation |
|---|---|
| Yeğenin kaç yaşında? | How old is your nephew or niece? |
| Beş yaşında, eylülde okula başlıyor. | Five, and starting school in September. |
| Çok tatlı. Kız çocuğu mu, oğlan mı? | How sweet. A girl or a boy? |
| Kız. Ablası da artık ergen. | A girl. And her older sister is already a teenager. |
| Zaman ne çabuk geçiyor. Sen kaç yaşındasın? | How time flies. And how old are you? |
| Otuz yaşındayım, ama bazen altmış gibi hissediyorum. | I'm thirty, but sometimes I feel sixty. |
| Merak etme, hepimiz öyleyiz. | Don't worry, we're all like that. |
How to prepare for a conversation like this
Memorizing the lines is not enough: the other person will say their own thing, not what is written. What helps more is catching the key words by ear and keeping three rescue phrases ready: “I don't understand”, “repeat, please”, “slower”.
And one more thing phrasebooks do not mention: awkwardness gets in the way more than not knowing the words.
- Fear of making mistakes gets in the way of learning a language, and noticeably so. The link turns up study after study, and together those studies cover almost twenty thousand people.checked many timesTeimouri, Goetze & Plonsky, 2019, Studies in Second Language Acquisition 41(2) · 19,933 participants from 23 countries; correlation with results r = −0.36.
- That fear can be dealt with — the methods have been tested and they work.checked many timesXiong et al., 2024, Journal of Language and Social Psychology · 37 studies, anxiety reduced by −0.61. Of the seven conditions examined, only age turned out to matter.
Frequently asked
How do you start a conversation in Turkish in this situation?
“Yeğenin kaç yaşında?” — How old is your nephew or niece? The first line in such a conversation is almost always the same, and that is the one worth learning: the other person will carry it from there.
What if you did not understand the reply?
Say “I don't understand” and “repeat, please” — both are in the rescue set. Admitting your language is still shaky almost always makes the other person more patient.
Should you memorize the dialogue?
No. It is more useful to catch the key words by ear: the other person will say their own thing, and a memorized line will not always fit their reply.