A Doctor’s Visit

In the video titled “What’s wrong?”, we’re giving examples to a patient-doctor dialogue by using optative, advice and necessitative structures.

Patient – Doctor Dialogues

In this video, you watched how a doctor’s appointment is made, then the conversation between the doctor and the patient.

First of all, it’s important to note that the language between a doctor and patient is a formal one. Therefore, you heard them address each other as “siz” (you).  In these dialogues, there are some commonly used expressions, but these should be used accordingly. For instance, in daily life, someone can ask his/her friend “Neyin var?” (What’s wrong?) to understand his/her problems, but a doctor asks “Şikayetiniz nedir?” (What’s your complaint?) to a patient.  The conversation that starts with this question continues with the patient telling the symptoms. After the exam, the doctor makes his/her recommendations.

As can be seen in the dialogue, medical terms and illness-related words in Turkish mostly come from either Arabic or English (with Latin origin) (such as muayene (exam), teşhis (diagnosis), enfeksiyon (infection) etc.).

In this chapter the emphasis is not only on common expressions, but also the use of optative, advice and necessitative structures.

Optative, Advice, Imperative

In the chapter this video is given, optative and imperative moods are explained as one of the most challenging topics for foreigners learning Turkish.
You’ll remember that in the 2^nd chapter of A1 level, the videos “Pazarda”, “Markette” and “Pidecide”, we talked about structures that indicate want and request, and how these are used in colloquial language.

While most of the Turkish language teaching programs include these topics in A2 level, we explained why we introduced them at the beginning of A1 as follows:

Want or request expressions are needed when asking for something or in even the simplest shopping dialogues. Therefore, teaching these structures as common expressions at the beginning level regardless of grammatical teaching order, then teaching the details of grammatical constructions at A2 level would be more beneficial for the students.

When to use optative?  When to use imperative?

While teaching basic verbs in the first chapter of the A1 level, we talked about second-person singular use of the imperative mood. (“gel” (come), “git” (go), “oku” (read), “yapma” (don’t do it), “alma” (don’t buy it) etc.)

Similarly, we talked about some of the uses of optative and imperative moods as common expressions in the 2^nd chapter of A1 level as mentioned above.

You might remember the street market and restaurant dialogues from chapter 2 that give examples to the use of the optative mood:

“Biraz sebze meyve alalım.” (Let’s buy some vegetables and fruits.)

“Bir kilo olsun.” (One kilogram.)

“ Pideciye gidelim mi?”  (Shall we go to the pide restaurant?)

The 3^rd chapter of A2 level gives all person inflections of these moods in a single chapter. This is because the use of the optative and imperative moods in Turkish complement each other.

Naturally, there is no first person use of the imperative mood, but unlike many other languages, the imperative mood can be used with both 2^nd person and 3^rd person in Turkish.

The optative mood on the other hand can be used with the 1^st person in practice. This is why, for an action, the optative mood is used for first person while the imperative mood is used for the others.

This might become clearer if we give an example with the verb “git” (go):

1^st person singular    →   (ben) gideyim (optative)

1^st person plural       →   (biz) gidelim (optative)

2^nd person singular   →   (sen) git  (imperative)

2^nd person plural       →   (siz) gidin/iniz  (imperative)

3^rd person singular   →   (o) gitsin (imperative)

3^rd person plural       →   (onlar) gitsinler (imperative)

This is why teaching/learning the imperative and optative structures together help to understand the topic better.

“Gerek” (must) or “Lazım” (should)? 

The “gerek” and “lazım” structures given in the same chapter are the most commonly used for the indicating necessity in Turkish. Teaching these structures before the use of the necessitative mood (-meli, -malı) is because of their frequent use in daily life. Moreover, the more colloquial use of the suffixes –sene, -sana are also introduced in this chapter (gitsene, yapsana, alsanıza).

Learning all these linguistic structures we talked about in this chapter at once is of course difficult and might be confusing, so dividing them into chapters and learning them with relevant context will ensure better understanding.

Good luck!

Ayşin Önder

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