Breakfast foods: ekmek, peynir, zeytin and kahvaltı

The idea

A Turkish breakfast table is named dish by dish: ekmek, peynir, zeytin, yumurta, reçel, bal, tereyağı, simit, salatalık. The meal itself is kahvaltı, and you make it: kahvaltı yapmak. What you eat at it comes after kahvaltıda (at breakfast). A counted food stays singular (iki simit), and a noun like ekmek softens its final k to ğ before a vowel ending: ekmeğe.

Examples

• Kahvaltıda yumurta yiyorum.I eat eggs at breakfast.
• Sabah kahvaltı yapıyorum.I have breakfast in the morning.
• Ekmeğe tereyağı sürüyorum.I spread butter on the bread.
• Reçel mi, bal mı istiyorsun?Do you want jam or honey?Both questions use mi after the word, written apart, but the vowel follows the word: reçel mi (front e) and bal mı (back a).
• Fırından iki simit alıyorum.I buy two simit from the bakery.After a number the counted food stays singular, so it is iki simit, never iki simitler. Fırından is fırın + -dan: from the bakery.
• Beyaz peynir ve siyah zeytin çok lezzetli.White cheese and black olives are very tasty.The adjectives beyaz and siyah stand before the noun and take no ending, and one çok lezzetli serves both foods.
• tuzlusaltytuz·lu-li / -lı / -lu / -lü: with, having
• yağsızwithout fatyağ·sızWithout: -siz / -sız / -suz / -süz

Watch out

Learners often say kahvaltı yiyorum because English eats breakfast. Turkish does breakfast: kahvaltı yapıyorum, and the foods are eaten inside it: kahvaltıda yumurta yiyorum. The second trap is the bread itself: ekmek keeps its k alone, but ekmeğe and ekmeği need ğ, never ekmeke.

Try it yourself

1. Add the ending -e to ekmek (bread): onto the bread.

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   ekmeğe

   ekmeğe: ekmek ends in k, which softens to ğ before the vowel ending -e, so it is not ekmeke.

2. Complete with the verb yapmak in the present continuous: I am having breakfast.

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   yapıyorum

   yapıyorum: breakfast is made, so the verb is yapmak; the stem yap takes -ıyor after its back vowel a and then -um for "I".

3. Write the question particle twice: Do you want jam or honey?

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   mi mı

   mi mı: reçel ends in the front vowel e, so mi; bal ends in the back vowel a, so mı. The two particles differ.

4. Add the with-suffix to tuz (salt): salty.

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   tuzlu

   tuzlu: the last vowel of tuz is u, back and rounded, so the with-suffix is -lu, not -li.

Use it today

Write three sentences about your breakfast: what you eat, what you spread on the bread and what you buy for the table.