Thankful Things - January

First on the list for the year...the word abla and all that goes with it.

For all my non-speaking Turkish friends (which would probably be all of you), abla is the word for older sister. Some of you are thinking, "Well, her brother doesn't live in Turkey, so why would a word for older sister have any impact on her life at all?" The thankful thing is in the "all that goes with it" part of the previous statement.

Titles are an important part of this culture. At the airport and bus station you hear "sayın yolcularımız" or "dear travelers". A person you don't know well, but who's name you know is so-and-so hanım if its a woman or bey if its a man. The police officer is memur bey, as is every other official worker. All teachers are either called hocam or öğretmenim by their students (the older or newer version of teacher). Everyone older than you gets a title as well. The much older lady on the street is called simply teyze, or aunt. If you are a child and the lady on the street has children you will also call her teyze.

And this brings me to the word abla. Abla is what you call your older sister. It's also what you call someone on the street who is older than you but does not have children or massive amounts of gray hair. Thus, just about every child on the street will call me abla. And the children in my building? They call me Catherine abla. To the children who know me, I will never be anything but Catherine abla. It goes on! When I go to the market or the pazar, the man behind the counter selling things will call me abla, whether or not he's old enough to be my grandfather. The guy on the bus? Abla. You could say it's a polite form of hey you. But then again, it's so much more.

Now things do get a bit confusing at times. I'm to call everyone who is a certain number of years older than me up to a certain age abla. Others I am to call teyze. The general rule of thumb is, if they are old enough to be your mother you call them teyze. Well...who likes to be called old? If you call the wrong woman teyze you are inadvertently saying that they are old. So the other general rule of thumb seems to be to err on the side of youth and call people abla until you are 100% positive you should call they teyze. Ah, but it gets even more confusing. I have a friend who is significantly younger than me, say around 9 years. Her mother is probably only 15 years older than me, and thus could not by any stretch of the imagination be assumed to be my mother (although this is possible, but I will save that for another day). But because I am her daughter's friend, I am to call her teyze.

What I would really like in my life is to have an abla-teyze ruler. If anyone sees one for sale, please let me know.
Those who will always call me Catherine abla mixed in with those who never will (and who, for the record, I only call by name).