bayram harçlığı
“bayram harçlığı” — holiday cash gift in Turkish. Noun, level B1. ç like "ch", dotless ı, ğ stretches the vowel: bay-RAM harç-lı-ĞI. In a live sentence: “Dede torunlara bayram harçlığı verdi” — Grandfather gave the grandchildren a holiday cash gift. You can hear how it sounds right here. A word from the everyday Turkish course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Turkish | bayram harçlığı |
| Translation | holiday cash gift |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | B1 |
- bayram harçlığıholiday cash gift
What it is
Money given to children on religious holidays after they kiss the hand of an elder. Families and neighbors are visited one by one, and by evening a child has collected a tidy sum. Sweets and Turkish delight are given alongside the money.
This word does not reduce to a translation: the thing it names is not part of everyday life here, so a “translation” would end up a description in brackets. The easiest way to learn it is together with its surroundings — where you meet it and what it is for.
How to pronounce it
ç like "ch", dotless ı, ğ stretches the vowel: bay-RAM harç-lı-ĞI
Why it looks that way
harçlık is pocket money. On the bayram children kiss the elders’ hands and receive harçlık; money and gold pinned to the newlyweds at a wedding is a different thing, takı.
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Dede torunlara bayram harçlığı verdiGrandfather gave the grandchildren a holiday cash gift
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “holiday cash gift” in Turkish?
«bayram harçlığı». ç like "ch", dotless ı, ğ stretches the vowel: bay-RAM harç-lı-ĞI. In a live sentence: “Dede torunlara bayram harçlığı verdi” — Grandfather gave the grandchildren a holiday cash gift. You can hear how it sounds right on this page. Noun, level B1.
Why does this word look the way it does?
harçlık is pocket money. On the bayram children kiss the elders’ hands and receive harçlık; money and gold pinned to the newlyweds at a wedding is a different thing, takı. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
Can I hear how it sounds?
Yes, right on this page: click the word and it will play. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.