How to Order a Coffee in Turkish | Turkish for Beginners

Lesson Transcript

Hey guys, merhaba ben Seda. Welcome, welcome, hoş geldiniz.

Nasılsınız? Hayat nasıl gidiyor? How are you guys doing? How is life going?

And today we will be talking about coffee. Today is the day we talk about coffee.

One of my favorite things in the world. Yes, today we will be talking about how to order coffee in

Turkey. Are you guys ready? But before diving into that, like how to order it, I want to talk

to you guys about the history and the cultural background of coffee in Turkish society. It may

be surprising to you, but it goes way, way back, okay? The origin of coffee, coffee plant is based

on Africa and it's used as a beverage was first realized in, I think, southern Arabia and it came

to the Ottoman Empire from the Arabia region, from the Arabs. And Venetian merchants who came to

Istanbul, like carried this favorite drink to Venice. Thus, the Europeans made coffee for the

first time around 17th century and the Ottomans, like during the reign of Kanuni Sultan Süleyman,

maybe you know it as Süleyman the Magnificent, this was around 16th century and the government

of Yemen brought the coffee he drank in Yemen and loved so much to Istanbul.

And coffee took its place in the palace kitchen as a prestigious beverage in very short time and

attracted great attention. And a rank named Kahveci Başı, head of coffee, was added to the palace

duties, to the kitchen duties. And the chief coffee maker who was in charge of cooking the coffee

of the sultan and the like statements to whom like was attached was chosen from among those who were

really royal, loyal, I'm sorry. And later coffee became a taste that the people of Istanbul were

very very very passionate about in a very short time. And like raw coffee beans were

roasted in pans, beaten in mortars and then cooked in cezves. This is a cezve. Okay, so

okay, so this is a cezve. Now I have to go to this, I'm talking about Turkish coffee.

So we get coffee beans either you know beat them or we take them like ready and we put for example

for one person we put one spoon of coffee here and we add one glass of water but this glass is a

special glass we have a special coffee glass so I have to show it to you so like this and

if you want sugar you add your sugar if you not you don't then you just little bit mix it and you

put it on the stove or on the like I don't know fire and you wait you just mix it a little and

you wait and it starts to like bubble and it gets really foamy and you put it in your

glass like this and your Turkish coffee is ready and you drink it and there's a really

um dark and um really really um I don't remember don't know the word for that but

you have the coffee the coffee grains on you know at the bottom of this glass so we call these

um special glass Turkish coffee glass and you leave that part you don't drink it

and if you want after we are done you just close it like this okay you just turn it and wish

a good fortune okay then do this then wait you can even put ringer your ring or

something metal here to make it cool faster and then if there is someone who can read your fortune

they read your fortune from this glass then after the glass they do this

just like that and from the plate so that's how we drink coffee have you ever tried it

and we call this kahve fincanı coffee coffee glass I don't know glass coffee cup Turkish coffee

I don't know there's no English word and this is cezve

okay let's continue okay in 1544

two Syrian Arabs I think opened the first coffee shop in Tahtakale Istanbul and at that time it

was a matter of a debate whether coffee was beneficial or not and contrary to previous

Muslim judges Kadı before him Bostanzade Mehmet Efendi gave a fetva stating that coffee is not

haram but even beneficial so a lot of coffee shops and cafes called kahvehane opened back then

and in coming years these places became like birthing place for sharing ideas creating public

opinions and some sultans even tried to close down these shops but it never worked people

kept drinking kept kept kept drinking at first European visitors wrote about weird black drink

the Turks loved drinking they were like what are these Turks drinking and there are a lot of foreign

journals about this weird looking rituals Turkish people have with this drink by rituals they mean

preparing and drinking this coffee anyway we love coffee so much we called our favorite meal

breakfast kahvaltı kahvaltı means breakfast and kahvaltı is made up two words kahve altı kahve coffee

altı under meaning literally under coffee suggesting that breakfast is something you eat

before coffee naming a meal according to its time to drink coffee should show

how deep the love of coffee is for Turkish people we also have a saying

Bir fincan kahvenin kırk yıl hatırı vardır.

a cup of coffee has 40 years of memory

also I talked about this in the video about funerals I think we serve plain dark Turkish

coffee after a funeral and call it call it acı kahve bitter coffee and I don't remember

if I said this before but during the kız isteme, söz you know asking the woman's family about marriage

the engagement ceremony the bride cook Turkish coffee and serve it to everyone and she serves

the groom to be his coffee with salt and sometimes with pepper it is supposed to taste horrible

and it is like a test if the groom makes a weird face you know while drinking like that it's ugly

that he proves that he's not up for the hardship of the marriage if he drinks it as if it's sugared

coffee like no very nice it means that he loves the bride so much and ready to take on life of

course it's only symbolic and something funny today but maybe it was serious in the old times

I don't know so you see coffee is in our DNA okay enough with the cultural info now

let's see how to order coffee that was our topic first of all in you know the filter Starbucks kind

of coffee is pretty new in Turkey maybe last 20 years before that when anyone said coffee they

meant Turkish coffee Türk kahvesi Turkish coffee and with Türk kahvesi there is not much option to order

you know the only thing you can change is the amount of sugar you want in your coffee so you

have three options şekerli şekerli with lots of sugar orta orta

literally middle but it means like a little bit of sugar and

sade sade without sugar sade without sugar so if you say

Bir Türk kahvesi alabilir miyim lütfen?

okay

can I have a cup of Turkish coffee please the person you are asking either the waiter

or your friend will ask you you know

Nasıl istersin?

Or if it is little bit of formal

Nasıl istersiniz?

how do you want it asking you know how much sugar you want in your coffee

Nasıl içersiniz? how do you drink it again this is asking only about the sugar

you wouldn't answer like with milk with this with that no just orta, şekerli, sade

that's the three options okay so after you would choose the sugar the amount of sugar you want

you just answer one of these three options şekerli sugar orta less sugar and sade no sugar

okay I think that's simple that that's it then you are good to go okay so this is for the of

course Turkish coffee but nowadays especially with young people they go to coffee shops like

Starbucks kind of coffee shops and order different types of coffees you know besides Turkish coffee

and the way you ordered it's not the same of course you know this craze we know and love with

a lot of options you to choose from but it's mostly really very similar to English words actually

because we learn these from Starbucks actually so when a barista asks

ne istersiniz ne istersiniz what do you want ne istersiniz you would say

for example either latte you know what latte is or you say filter coffee filtre kahve

and or I don't know like americano americano or cappuccino cappuccino like you know what I mean

it's the same you order it the same just some words in between like if you want to say sütlü

with milk you just use the word Turkish words and but the general order is the same so you should

be doing fine and even the sizes for example like are called in English it's the way that you know

they put it in the menu so people learn the English words like which size you want

uh then you would say tall grande venti short something like that you know again because of

the Starbucks culture and let's see what can you add in Turkish you we already said sütlü

sütlü with milk you can say sıcak sıcak sıcak hot of course or buzlu buzlu buzlu

um iced uh you can say kafeinsiz uh decaf kafeinsiz kafeinsiz

and what else what else what else you can say karamelli karamelli what a nice uh sound this

word has karamelli karamelli caramel um soya soya soya soy like soya sütü soy milk soy sütü soy

milk um i don't i think that's it you know i don't i can't think of anything right now but let's see

some examples in like sentence form so you get the idea um for example we can say

Kafeinsiz, tall, sıcak cappuccino, lütfen.

I'd like a tall hot decaf cappuccino, please.

Buzlu karamelli macchiato, lütfen

Iced caramel macchiato, please

You can mix and match the words to order your coffee! It is similar.

and as it comes to Turkish coffee there are different flavors in different regions when you go to a place you can see you know they serve different flavored Turkish coffee there it's not common way we only add the real thing is that Turkish coffee is the plain one but in different regions there are different flavors like

Sakızlı

Dibek kahvesi

Menengiçli

these are not that common but you can try and see if you like the taste

uh for me for example i just like to you know plain double without sugar Turkish coffee that's

my thing very very um dark that's my without any flavors i just love the taste of coffee

okay do you guys any you know questions have you guys ever tasted Turkish coffee did you like it

some people find it really strong i don't i'm used it i've been um drinking it with like since i was

five my grandma used to do this that's not okay you know i know from this day's perspective it's

not okay but as if she wasn't giving me the coffee like okay so that take this and drink it no

she was doing this she was just poor you know put a little coffee here and i used to drink it like

this from the play as if it's not drinking the coffee it's like playing but i used to drink it

and i would love it i was like five or six years old high on caffeine i think and i think that's

why i can drink really strong double without any sugar Turkish coffee i don't know it's funny

anyway if you guys like this video please don't forget to like and subscribe and if you guys want

more content like this you know the drill go turkishclass101.com and see for yourself with

the pdfs videos audios everything and please do comment what kind of coffee do you like

and about turkish coffee what is your experience i will see you next time

Görüşmek üzere, kendinize iyi bakın, hoşçakalın.

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