Lessons · 18 of 18

Making new words

Four endings that don't change a word's shape but replace it — with, without, -ness, and the person who does it for a living.

Everything since lesson 11 has been about changing a word's shape — the same word, wearing an ending, still meaning what it meant. This lesson is the other thing endings do: make a word that is not the old word at all, with its own meaning and its own line in the dictionary.

There are four of them, and between them they account for more of the Karachay vocabulary than anything else. Learn the four and thousands of words stop being strangers.

With, and without

lı puts a thing into something; sız takes it out. They come as a pair, and if a word takes one it almost always takes the other.

• tuz salt → tuzlu salty · tuzsuz unsalted
• çaç hair → çaçlı hairy · çaçsız hairless
• kar snow → karlı snowy · karsız snowless

Those are the easy ones. Now watch how far the meaning can travel:

• saw well → sawsuz ill
• til tongue → tilsiz mute
• ölüm death → ölümsüz immortal

"Without well" is ill. "Without a tongue" is mute. "Without death" is immortal. The ending tells you how the word was made; it does not tell you what the word means. That is why these live in the dictionary as words of their own and not as buttons on the word builder — a speaker decides what each one means, and a rule cannot.

The quality itself

lık (front: lik) turns an adjective into the thing it is the quality of — English's -ness and -hood at once.

• saw well → sawluk health
• kart old → kartlık old age
• issi hot → issilik heat
• uzun long → uzunluk length
• karnaş brother → karnaşlık brotherhood

It works on nouns too, and there it makes the thing that serves the first thing — which is where it gets delightful:

• köz eye → közlük spectacles
• kün day, sun → künlük an umbrella
• tiş tooth → tişlik shashlik

A day-thing is an umbrella, an eye-thing is a pair of spectacles, and a tooth-thing is shashlik. sözlük — a word-holder — is a dictionary, which you can use to look up the other three.

The person whose business it is

çı names someone by what they work with.

• temir iron → temirçi a smith
• iş work → işçi a worker
• bal honey → balçı a beekeeper
• koy sheep → koyçu a shepherd
• taş stone → taşçı a stonemason

Careful with this one, because it has a near-twin from lesson 15. That one, ıwçu, is built on a verb: cazıwçu is a writer because writing is what they do. This one is built on a noun: temirçi is a smith because iron is what they work. Both land on an English word ending in -er, and they are two different endings.

And one aside: counting

Numbers have two endings of their own, and no other word takes them. nçı puts a number in order, and ew counts a small group of people:

• birinçi — the first
• ekinçi — the second
• ekew — the two of them
• üçew — the three of them

Every number's page lists both. The people-counting one is for small groups — our sources have it up to six and then stop.