Turkish Language
The Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters. Compared to English, Q, X, and W are removed and 6 new letters are added... all of which appear to be variants on existing letters.
a, b, c, ç, d, e, f, g, ğ, h, ı, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, ö, p, r, s, ş, t, u, ü, v, y, z
There are 8 vowels. Based on the sample words in our packet, each vowel can make many different sounds, but it seems like these are the common sounds?
a = aw (alrighty) or uh
e = eh (meh) or aw
ı = ih (tid bit)
i = ee (sweetie)
o = ow (gold)
ö = oo (mood)
u = oo (clue)
ü = oo (clue) not sure of the difference between these to be honest :)
Cats
These strays have a house
Shortest paragraph ever.Topkapı Palace (the i is not dotted)
This palace was the residence of the Ottoman sultans from the mid 1400s to mid 1800s. The most interesting portion of the palace was the Harem. The Harem housed the living quarters for the Sultan, his mother, his wives, and his concubines. The only other people allowed to enter the Harem were the guards. The guards were all castrated and were called eunuchs. There are many similarities between the Harem and the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. One difference is that all of the occupants of the Harem were allowed to enter/exit the Harem freely, the only restrictions being on who could enter. Below is a pictorial walk-through of the Harem w/ Game of Thrones analogies.
Entrance
Hallways
Lower 2 floors beautifully tiled. Not sure why panorama messed up the white balance on the top.
More Hallways
Eunuchs
The guy sitting down would be Varys. The guy standing would be one of his spiders.
Mother Sultan's courtyard under repairs
Cercei Lannister's digs. Pretty much this queen bee ran the show, heavily influencing the Sultan's decisions. Also, she and the wives would get to select which of the concubines the Sultan was allowed to sleep with. If a concubine accidentally become pregnant, she was promoted to become the Sutlan's wife.
Mother Sultan's living room
Mother Sultan's room
Sultan's Fancy Golden door
Sultan's fancy digs
Sultan's ceiling. Huge. Gorgeous.
I've got lots more pictures of tile from the harem, but I suspect you are over it by now :)
Harem Courtyard
View from Courtyard
I suspect the trees didn't used to be there so you could see the water and beautiful landscape back in its hay day.
Phew, finally we left the Harem and headed out to the middle of the palace. Here are some shots from a building where the Sultan would receive guests.
Raised gold patterns in the rugs
Golden fountain
Nice View!
Another one!
Flower Garden
Pond
Phew, lucky for you guys, the rest of the palace was no photography allowed. We saw a bunch of jewelry, clothing, and weaponry, and we skipped the sacred relics. Longest paragraph ever.
Archeological Museum
Next we headed to the archeological museum. Unfortunately their biggest attraction (a bunch of sarcophagi) was closed, but there was still plenty of neat stuff.
Building on left was Tile Museum (tiles and ceramics)
Rest is Archaeological Museum
Front of Tomb
Bottom Right of Tomb
Top Right of Tomb
More Egyptian-ier Tomb
Famous Bust
Sea God
(image likeness used to create Davy Jones in Pirates)
King Arthur: Look!
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound.
Butt!
If this person was a butt-head, then this is a butt bust :)
History
Lots of information about history and history-like things, including the town walls, walls of babylon, famous religious building, and more! Wow!
1500's depiction of Istanbul from the sea
I'm sure the walls around the city were awfully intimidating at the time.
Lots of cool coins to see how they changed in the region over time.
Since we've seen a lot of tile from the Harem, I'll summarize the tile museum in my 2 favorite shots.
Lastly there was the Oriental history museum. Artifacts of Babylon
This guy is huge
This one, also huge
Cat Nab
And upon exiting the museum area, we saw a cat steal some bread out of an abandoned baby stroller.
This guy stole the bread
He took the money and ran
This guy was stalking the thief, but the thief ducked away under the fence
This kitty family came to check out the commotion
They looked for more magic bread-stuffs, but none was to be found.
Cute family!
After a long day, I took a quick snorkel at our hotel pool. It was 140cm deep. No fish.
1. q, w, and x are all important vim characters. How do they vim in turkey?!?
ReplyDelete2. if the cats have a house, are they really strays?
1. it looks like they keep the letters on their keyboard, add letters for all of the keys that your right pinkie normally gets, and then overload the numbers with all the important coding symbols (brackets, etc). http://www.turkishlanguage.co.uk/pics/smallqwerty.jpg
Delete2. Hard to say. They don't get any medical treatment, but people tend to be happy with them being around. Both Istanbul and Athens have machines where you put your plastic into it and it dispenses dog food. I think cats, dogs, and pigeons are all pretty happy in this part of the world. We did see one dog with what looked like a tracking tag on its ear.