Numbers, time and dates in Turkish

No “and” in a number

British English puts an “and” after the hundred; Turkish puts none anywhere. Each place is one word, side by side: yüz beş, iki yüz kırk, bin dokuz yüz. The same goes for money: beş lira elli kuruş, with no ve between them.

A thousand without “one”

English may say “one thousand”; Turkish may not: bin on its own, and likewise yüz for a hundred. bir bin and bir yüz do not exist. Only the million needs its bir: bir milyon.

A hundred without “one”

A number only goes before yüz when there is more than one hundred: iki yüz, dokuz yüz. A hundred and fifty is yüz elli — no “one” and no “and”.

No plural after a number

The number already says there are several, so the noun stays singular: üç kitap, yirmi lira, beş gün. The same applies after kaç, birkaç and çok: kaç çocuk? English adds an -s to every one of them; Turkish adds nothing.

How many: singular

After the question word kaç, “how many”, the noun is singular too. The possessive ending stays: çocuğun “your child”, together with var for “you have got”.

A year is just a number

English reads a year in two pairs; Turkish reads it as an ordinary number, “one thousand nine hundred eighty-four”: bin dokuz yüz seksen dört. 2026 is iki bin yirmi altı.

A billion is a “milyar”

Turkish uses the same scale as English — a billion is a thousand million — but calls it milyar. The next step up, a thousand billion, is trilyon.

Past: the hour in the accusative

The quarter “is passing the three”, and what it passes is the object, in the accusative: üçü, dördü, altıyı, on ikiyi. Where English has the little word “past”, Turkish has an ending on the hour.

To: the hour in the dative

“There is a quarter to four” — the hour it is heading for is in the dative, the case of direction: dörde, beşe, altıya. Past means accusative, to means dative, and the two are easily swapped.

At three o’clock: the locative

A point in time takes the locative, like a place: saat üçte, saat beşte, saat dokuzda. The question is saat kaçta?. The dative means “towards” or “until” and is wrong here.

What time? — with the locative

saat kaç? asks “what time is it?”, saat kaçta? asks “at what time?”. The little -ta is the locative, English “at”, and the answer carries it too: saat onda.

At quarter past: “geçe”, not “geçiyor”

geçiyor and var are verbs and make a sentence of their own: “it is quarter past three”. For “at” you use their forms geçe and kala: üçü çeyrek geçe, dörde çeyrek kala. The cases of the hour stay the same.

The date: “seventeen October”

English says the date as an ordinal; Turkish uses the plain number: 17 Ekim, said on yedi Ekim, with no “the” and no “of”. Written, there is no full stop and no “th” after the figure.

A month on its own is small

English always gives a month a capital. Turkish capitalises it only in a full date, because then it names one particular day: 17 Ekim 2026. On its own it is written small: ekimde, mart ayında. The days of the week are small too.

An ending on a figure: with an apostrophe

An ending on a figure is set off with an apostrophe, and it follows the spoken word: 2026 ends in altı, so 2026'da; 3 is üç, so 3'te; 40 is kırk, so 40'ta.

Per cent comes first

yüzde means “in the hundred” and comes before the number, just like the sign: %50, said yüzde elli.

The decimal point is a comma

Turkish swaps the English signs: a comma for the decimals and a full stop for the thousands — 3,5, 1.250. The comma is said as virgül. On a price tag 1.250,50 TL is one thousand two hundred and fifty lira fifty.

One and a half: “buçuk” after the number

There are two words for “half”. yarım stands without a number before the noun: yarım kilo, half a kilo. buçuk comes after a number: bir buçuk kilo, iki buçuk saat — and the noun stays singular.

Fourth: the t becomes d

Before the vowel of the ending, the t of dört becomes d: dördüncü, and likewise dörder, four each. It is the only number word that changes; üçüncü and kırkıncı stay as they are. There is no “first, second, third” to learn: birinci, ikinci, üçüncü are all regular.

Two each: “ikişer”, not “her iki”

For “each” the number takes an ending of its own: birer, ikişer, üçer, onar. her iki means “both” — her iki elma are the two apples, not two for everybody.

Three quarters: the bottom number first

A fraction is read from the bottom: “out of four, three”. The denominator comes first, in the locative, then the numerator: dörtte üç, üçte bir, onda bir.