Indulgences

1. Çilim

   Çilim (a smoke; also the pipe smoked)

   Usage

   In Turkmenistan smoking is banned across public space. A public-place ban dates from 2000 and a tobacco control law took effect on 25 December 2013. There is a ban in all indoor public places, indoor workplaces and public transport, plus parks, gardens, playgrounds and beaches and cultural, educational, medical and sports facilities, with a 15 m exclusion zone at public transport entrances. The Code of Administrative Violations fines smoking, hookah included, in state bodies, enterprises, military units, educational institutions, theatres, cinemas, public transport and parks. In January 2016 the president banned the sale of all tobacco products outright, with a 6,900 manat fine for a shop selling cigarettes. What is on sale since then has varied, so check locally; the smoking ban itself has not wavered. In practice you will use this word to ask whether somewhere is non-smoking, not to ask permission to light up

   Grammar Note

   Two senses: the tobacco or cigarette that is smoked, and the device used to smoke it, hookah included. To smoke is çilim çekmek, literally to draw a çilim

2. Temmäki

   Temmäki (tobacco, the leaf and the crop)

   Usage

   It is defined as the plant whose leaves are dried and prepared for smoking or snuffing, and the crop taken from it. Where çilim is what you smoke, temmäki is tobacco as a material, and it is the word that appears in law and on signage. Sales are tightly controlled too: the minimum purchase age is 21, vending-machine and online sales are prohibited, sales are barred in stadiums, healthcare and cultural venues and within 100 m of a school, and single cigarettes may not be sold. Check the current rules, including what you may bring in, before you travel

3. Nas

   Nas (the under-the-tongue chewing tobacco - banned in Turkmenistan)

   Usage

   This entry is here to warn, not to shop with. Nas is a greyish-green substance mixed with ash, lime and oil and placed under the tongue. It is used across Central Asia under the names naswar and nasvay, but Turkmenistan is the exception: a 2008 presidential decree banned its production, sale, use and import, and in 2011 it was added to the list of narcotics. An earlier decree under President Niyazov had already prohibited chewing tobacco. Carrying it in from a neighbouring country can get you into trouble

4. Arak

   Arak (spirits, vodka)

   Usage

   Arak is simply an alcoholic drink, with examples of glasses being filled and clinked, of someone saying they do not drink arak, and of a bottle of it. Alcohol is not illegal in Turkmenistan but it is closely regulated: the minimum age to buy and to drink is 21. Drinking on buses, trains, planes and ships is prohibited. Where and when it may be sold has been changed repeatedly by administrative measures, so do not count on buying it in an ordinary shop, and ask before offering it to anyone

5. Çakyr

   Çakyr (wine)

   Usage

   First sense: an alcoholic drink made mainly from grapes, glossed with şerap. An identically spelled çakyr means dried and bleached, of bone and the like, and gives the idioms çakyr aýaz, a hard frost, and çakyr ses, a hoarse voice

6. Piwo

   Piwo (beer)

   Usage

   It is a newer borrowing, from Russian "пиво". The age and place restrictions on drinking apply to beer as well

7. Pişme

   Pişme (fried dough dusted with sugar)

   Usage

   It is defined as rolled dough cut into diagonal squares and fried in oil. Flour, water, sugar, a little yeast and salt are kneaded, rolled 1.0-1.5 cm thick, cut into 2.5-3.0 cm pieces, fried in hot oil and dusted with sugar. The examples have two pots on the fire full of frying pişme, and older women scattering pişme and nogul-nabat over people arriving - it is also a sweet thrown at celebrations. There is also a yeastless version with egg, "Pişme (hworost)"

8. Nabat

   Nabat (rock sugar crystallised on a thread)

   Usage

   It is defined as sugar boiled in a pot and set on a thread into branched or lumpy crystals. Its example has someone taking a piece from beside the tea bag, putting it in the mouth and then lifting the bowl: the sugar goes in first and the tea follows. Another example pairs it with gant, ordinary sugar, in the phrase for crushing them both

9. Kemput

   Kemput (boiled sweets, candy)

   Usage

   It is defined as a confectionery product, a sweet, with the example of a father buying his child kemput. It comes from Russian "конфета" but has settled into Turkmen spelling as kemput

   Grammar Note

   The final voiceless consonant voices before a vowel-initial suffix: kemput becomes kempudy. The same rule gives gutap - gutaby and çelpek - çelpegi

10. Halwa

    Halwa (a dense sesame-and-sugar sweet)

    Usage

    It is defined as a firm, solid sweet made by mixing milk, künji (sesame) and sugar. There is the proverb "Halwany hekim iýer, şallagy ýetim", the physician eats the halwa and the orphan takes the whip. The sweet is made from the Middle East across Central Asia

11. Kişde

    Kişde (dried apricots; dried fruit generally)

    Usage

    Two senses: dried apricots, and dried fruit in general, with pomidor kişdesi and alma kişdesi as examples. One illustration has a hostess sending her guests home with bundles of gant, nabat, kişde and pisse so the children at home may sweeten their mouths too - it belonged with the sugar and nuts as a standard parting gift. The idiom kişde ýaly bolmak, to become like dried fruit, means to waste away

12. Kişmiş

    Kişmiş (raisins)

    Usage

    It is defined as grapes spread out and dried. One example notes that even the humblest meal is a çişlik of five-month kid with a palaw studded with seedless (bidäne) raisins, so it goes into the rice as well as being eaten on its own. There is also the proverb "Kişmiş iýseň, çöpi bar", eat raisins and you get the stalks with them

13. Pisse

    Pisse (pistachios)

    Usage

    It is defined as a hard-shelled fruit with a kernel inside, and the tree that bears it. Its example lines it up with hoz (walnut) and badam (almond) in a saying about losing your teeth cracking them. Wild pistachio woodland covers much of the Badhyz (Bathyz) reserve in the south-east of the country

14. Hoz

    Hoz (walnuts)

    Usage

    It is defined as a tree bearing a round, hard-shelled nut, and that nut. It has three senses: the hardwood tree of the genus Juglans, its nut, and a nut generally. The example has a child unable to look away once he spots kişde or hoz in someone's hand, and there is the proverb "Hem hoz gerek, hem hozuň mürrügi", you want the walnut and you want its shell too

Browse all TravelPhrases languages