Saturday, August 25, 2012

More fun with dictionaries - tay-tuş

Alef's comment has sent me off to the dictionary yet again. I am intrigued by this word tay-tuş, which I have never heard before. This means equal or a match, as Alef said. The sample sentence in the dictionary is Onlar sənin tay-tuşun deyil. They are not your equal. I looked up both tay and tuş. Tay by itself means bale or package, as in bir tay pambıq - a bale of cotton. It also means a part of a pair - ayaqqabının tayı - and equal or match. Tuş means well-aimed or accurate.


Taya means a stack. As in, ot tayası - haystack. Does this only apply to hay, or can you have a stack of books? Or a stack of money? Or a stack of chairs? Thanks to Samir, we now know - You can't say these things. It doesn't make sense!

One who makes a haystack is a tayavuran. But strangely, there is a phrase taybatay açmaq - to throw open, as with a window - Külək pəncərəni taybatay açdı - The wind blew open the window.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You have explained so clearly.i liked that.But, about the haystack, u can only use that word for hay.So, it doesnt make sense to say pul tayasi or stul tayasi.

Alef Noon said...

You can also use the word tay without tuş. Example: O sənin tayın deyil.
Notice that taya does not mean just stack. It means haystack almost always even though you can use it with the word ot. I know taya as a haystack makes the word ot redundant but I guess that is how azerbaijani works (I think I know the reason why it is so but I'm not sure).

As to taybatay, you will see more words that has the same structure (word a + midfix + word a). Examples: qarabaqara, dalbadal cağbəcağ, sözbəsöz, vurhavur, qaçhaqaç. This is a way of creating new words. But again that does not mean that you can take any word, add a given midfix and get the new meaning you want.
Example: dal means back, dalbadal means one after another or without ceasing. Söz means word but sözbəsöz means word for word as in word for word repetition or literal translation.

I hope it helps.

Alef Noon said...

Oh, sorry, I forgot my another example.
Arxa means back or behind (synonym: dal). But you cannot make arxabaarxa (arxa+ba+arxa) to mean immiediately behind or something else.

Prof Coline said...

As always, very informative comments from you Alef. Thanks a lot! I have invited a few Bakuvian friends to be authors on this blog. Could I invite you? Send me an email if you like at colleen.macdonell at gmail.