Kisses...

There are lots of details about a language that you just can't learn in a class. I'll make time to explain the multitudinous imprecations of the Turkish language later... maybe.

Anyhow, something I've run into a great deal lately, is the Turkish variation of SMS/EMail-speak. When I first encountered this sort of thing in English, I think I was thirteen. "BRB", "LOL", and "AFK", are all early examples that come to mind. After I moved to Turkey and acquired my first cell phone in 2004 (I know, much later than most), I remember getting messages from English-speakers to this effect: "Nice 2 c u 2day. Lets meet b4 class 2morow."

The Turkish effort is much the same, with numbers replacing certain sounds. However, in the race to simplify and truncate into the available 160 characters, I've noticed that vowels, silent letters, and even suffixes start to disappear. This happens mostly in the future tense, where Turkish picks up some long verb suffixes, but to give you a sense of what this looks like, I tried to compose an analogous example in English:

"Hey! Hwr u 2day? MayB go watch the match 2night, wna come? If not, lets meet 2mrow 2 drink T. By! :P"

I think, if you were learning English as a second language, the extent to which this can be confusing would be clearer.

It is obviously a very informal way of communicating, something only done with people familiar to the sender. I find the most interesting phenomenon in all of it, is the intersection of gesture and the text message, and I've noticed the word "öptüm" close a number of communiques.

After Turks meet with friends or family, the familiar good-bye is generally a kiss to both cheeks exchanged over a handshake or hug. After hearing a friend end a phone call this way, I realized that it is even common to end remote communications with a "kiss".

Any of the following phrases will do:

öpücük(ler)- kiss(es)
öptüm- I kissed
öpüyörüm- I kiss/am kissing
öpücük gönderiyorum- I'm sending a kiss