One of my best friends is doing his PhD in Cambridge now. Unlike me he is, almost an intellectual, great knowledge in history, interested in arts, plays an ancient Turkish instrument (Ney).
When he first came back to Turkey. I asked his impressions. “Humans are the same everywhere, from the first hand observations” he said smiling.
Commons, differences. A very enjoyable chat went on.
One point made laugh. When I asked which point he had difficulty in.
He said “I tend to say something often but I can’t”. 🙂 Let me (try to) explain:
In Turkish almost for every situation there is a “phrase”. I mean you say “God bless”, when someone sneezes. We say “live long” and if a second sneeze comes, we say “live longer”.
Like that; when someone gets out of the shower, shaves, a relative goes away, a new born baby, see something nice,…. the list goes on and on. a Unique phrase for every occasion.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Levent
I’m sure you wont take this the wrong way but do you Turks spend a lot of time looking at each other getting out of the shower and saying, ‘you look wet’ and then a few moments later, ‘you look wetter’?
lool!
Levent, it’s the same in other countries. Here for example people are always wishing each other a good somethingorother: equivalent to “enjoy your work/journey/drink/etc”. In S Germany/Austria people say ‘Mahlzeit’ if they see you with a snack or if it’s close to a normal mealtime. The Brits thrive on saying less.
People here are quite like that, though not as much as they used to be. Language is becoming more standard, and the ‘religious’ phrases like ‘God bless you!’ are being lost as society becomes more secular.
In London I worked with a young woman who had quite a ‘posh’ English accent but would often exclaim ‘Jesus, Mary and Holy Saint Joseph!’ She had picked this up from her Italian mother, who had picked it up from working with Irish nurses.
We do have phrases like Bless you when someone sneezes, but not a different one for the second sneeze. Lots and lots of phrases to say goodnight. I used to use all of them and then try to think up more when I was little to put off the going to sleep.
A friend works with a very posh Nigerian woman who has somewhere along the line picked up the expression ‘You get me?’ which apparently reduces the whole office to helpless giggles whenever she says it. 🙂
I didn’t know that Janus.
The bit you said about getting more “secular” is something to think about, Brendan.
Isobel, :). I’d love to learn some of them.
Goodnight. Sleep tight. Which comes from tightening up the ropes under the bed to stop the matress sagging if I remember correctly.
Often to rhyme with Don’t let the bugs bite.
Sweet dreams.
Goodnight, God bless.
Gosh I’m struggling, but I know we had a while litany of them.