Greetings in Turkish: hello, good morning, thank you and two goodbyes

Merhaba, selam and the time-of-day greetings

Merhaba fits almost every situation: a shop, an office, a neighbour on the stairs. It came into Turkish through Ottoman Turkish from Arabic marḥaban, welcome. In quick speech the h nearly disappears, and Wiktionary records a fast form /ˈme.ɾa.ba/ next to the careful /ˈmæɾ.ha.baː/.

Selam, from Arabic salām, peace, is the shorter word and is glossed in the dictionary simply as hi.

Three greetings change with the clock. Günaydın, good morning, is a young word: Wiktionary dates it to the 1910s and builds it from gün, day, and aydın, bright. It is also said, jokingly, to someone who has only just understood something obvious, a second sense the dictionary records. İyi günler, good day, covers the daytime; iyi akşamlar, good evening, takes over after work; iyi geceler, good night, closes the day.

Wiktionary files iyi geceler among the Turkish farewells, and its example, iyi geceler öpücüğü, a good-night kiss, shows the phrase used as a noun as well.

Hoş geldiniz and hoş bulduk: a greeting with a fixed reply

Hoş geldiniz means welcome, literally you came pleasantly. Wiktionary notes the formal or plural form; to one friend it is hoş geldin. Related forms exist in Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek, and the dictionary suggests a partial calque of the Persian welcome.

The guest does not answer with thank you. The fixed reply is hoş bulduk, roughly we found it pleasant, and Wiktionary glosses it as the thanks given in answer to hoş geldin.

Nasılsınız, how are you, is the formal question; nasılsın is the informal one. One possible answer is iyiyim, teşekkür ederim, siz nasılsınız?, I'm well, thank you, and you?

Two goodbyes: güle güle and hoşça kal

Turkish greetings at parting depend on who is going. The person who leaves says hoşça kal, stay well, or hoşça kalın to several people or formally; Allah'a ısmarladık, a more traditional phrase, does the same job and is also said by the departing party. The person who stays behind answers güle güle.

Güle güle is a doubled form of gül-, to smile or laugh, and means smilingly. That literal sense lives on in a second use: someone who has bought something new hears güle güle kullan, use it in good spirits. The farewell and the good wish are the same words.

Görüşürüz, see you, is the neutral alternative that anyone can say, leaving or staying.

Thank you, kolay gelsin and geçmiş olsun

Teşekkür ederim is the full thank you, built on teşekkür, from Arabic tašakkur. Teşekkürler, its plural, is the shorter thanks. Sağ ol, literally be healthy, is the warm everyday word; sağ olun is the formal or plural form. Writing it as one word, sağol, is listed by Wiktionary as a misspelling.

Two wishes are part of daily greetings in Turkish and have no direct English match. Kolay gelsin, may it come easy, is the salutation for anyone who is working or has a long or difficult task ahead. Geçmiş olsun, may it be past, is said to someone who is ill or has been through something hard, and also after a difficult task such as an exam.

Spelling the greetings: İ, ı and ş

Several greetings show the two Turkish i's side by side. Günaydın ends in dotless ı and nasılsınız has three of them; iyi has two dotted ones. At the start of a sentence iyi akşamlar becomes İyi akşamlar, with a capital İ that keeps its dot, and a greeting card that prints İYİ GECELER in capitals needs the dotted capital twice.

The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters, and three of the extra ones turn up in greetings in Turkish. Ş in hoş and akşam is the English sh, ğ in sağ lengthens the vowel before it so that sağ ol sounds like saa ol, and c in geceler is the j of jam.