I ended my posting of May 15th by saying that English-speakers’ love of doubled up words is - in my experience - matched only by speakers of Turkish.

Like us they adore rhyme.  (Click here to go to an earlier posting which has a few tips on Turkish pronunciation)

ahım şahım   (bright and beautiful)

çiçili biçili   (flashy)

allem kallem   (tricks, dodges)

çıtı pıtı   (dainty)

çıtır pıtır   (babbling sweetly)

hırtı pırtı   (junk, rubbish)

ıvır zıvır   (bits & pieces, nonsense)

şöyle böyle   (so-so)

zırt pırt   (any time whatsoever)

And they also like doublets with just a change of vowel.

buram boram   (in great amounts)

dangıl dungul   (boorish)

ham hum   (hemming and hawing)

şakır şukır   (with a rattle)

şangır şungur   (with a crash)

şapır şupur   (smacking one’s lips loudly)

Though some - such as allak bullak (pell mell) and abur cubur (greedily) - can involve an extra consonant in the second part as well as a vowel change.

Turkish is particularly rich in examples of repetition, especially in cases of onomatopoeia.

fısır fısır   (with a cracking or hissing sound)

fışır fışır   (with a rustling or splashing sound)

hış hış   (with a rustling sound)

lıkır lıkır   (with a gurgle)

patır patır   (with a pattering sound)

tangır tangır   (with a clatter)

gurul gurul   (with a rumbling sound)

Alliteration in doublets doesn’t seem to be as common as in English, except in the interesting case of what can be called emphasising adjectives.  The equivalent in English can be:

a) an adjective modified by an adverb, noun or other adjective:

intense blue / deep blue / vividly red / absolutely evident /  spotlessly clean / pitch black / jet black / bone dry /

b)  a simile

black as pitch / black as coal /  white as snow / hard as granite / quick as lightning / dry as a bone /

In Turkish, by contrast, they frequently add a prefix to an adjective, being a reduced form of the original word with a different consonant. Thus:

beyaz (white): bembeyaz (snow white, white as snow)

dolu (full): dopdolu (chock full, chock a block)

temiz (clean): tertemiz (spotlessly clean)

boş  (empty): bomboş  (quite empty)

belli (evident): besbelli (absolutely evident)

kuru (dry): kupkuru (dry as a bone)

açık (open): apaçık (wide open)

kara (black): kapkara (jet black)

siyah (black): simsiyah  (pitch black)

kırmızı  (red): kıpkırmızı (bright red, blood red, vividly red)

mavi  (blue):  masmavi  (bright blue, sky blue)

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We have been going to a small hotel in southern Turkey called Caretta Caretta (scientific name of the loggerhead sea turtle) for some time now, and the fact that the hotel itself sports a double name prompted me to write the following poem, itself chock-a-block (dopdolu) with doublets.  (Note that not all examples of doubling are actually doublets: maalesef, maalesef, for example, translates as ‘sadly, sadly’ and is doubled just to fit the metre).  The translation is pretty free, keeping mainly to the rhythm of the Turkish.

Vocabulary notes

bayram

The feast at the end of Ramadan, the equivalent of Eid in Arabic. Note that Ramadan is Ramazan in Turkish, but in the poem it appears as the name of the main male employee at the hotel, the other employees being Durjan, Deleha, Meriem and Halil.

eş

‘spouse’. So eşim in this context = ‘my wife’.                                                           

Hanım  

Honorific added to a woman’s first name (equivalent of Mrs + surname).  In the poem it refers to the two sisters who own and run the hotel: Gönül Hanım and Nuran Hanım. (The male equivalent is Bey, as in Murat Bey, the eldest son).

her

‘all, every’, so her şey = everything; her zaman = always, every time; her yıl = every year;  her gün = every day, daily; herkes = everyone.           

kaliteli

‘Of quality’.  This is a loan word from French, with the -li suffix, which makes a noun into an adjective.

Caretta Caretta, Bayram için,

her zaman, her yıl, tıklım tıklım.

Caretta Caretta, for the end of Ramadan,

always, every year (is) full to bursting.

Her şey çok çok burcu burcu,

Hava, hava ahım şahım.                    

Everything smells so very, sweetly

The air and the weather are bright and beautiful

Yemek her gün kaliteli,         

her şey her şey  buram boram. 

Everyday the food is highest quality,

absolutely ev’rything in great abundance.

Abur cubur yiyiyoruz,                                  

lopur lopur  yiyiyoruz.

Greedily, hungrily we put away the food.

We stuff it in our faces and we bolt it down.

Gönül Hanım, Nuran Hanım, Ramazan, Durjan,                 

Deleha, Meriem, Halil, herkes

vızır vızır çalışıyorlar,

harıl harıl çalışıyorlar

The owners and the staff are always working.

All of them working their fingers to the bone.

Maalesef maalesef ben ve eşim                             

hıckıra hıckıra ağlayarak                           

Kalkan’dan, Kalkan’dan ayrılıyoruz

Sadly, sadly Jane and I,

sobbing and weeping,

crying and lamenting,

have to go, have to leave Kalkan now!