Real speech is full of fuzzy numbers: "around five," "in his forties," "fifty or so people," "we ate, drank, and stuff." English scatters these across many little words — "around, about, -ish, or so, and such." Turkish has a tidier kit, and the star of it is genuinely surprising: you make a number approximate by pluralizing it. Saat beş is "five o'clock"; saat beşlerde is "around five." This page covers that plural trick plus the phrases kadar and civarında ("about") and the trailing vague words falan/filan ("or so / and stuff").
The plural -lAr means "around" on numbers and times
This is the device English has no single equivalent for. Add the plural suffix -lAr (which surfaces as -lar after back vowels, -ler after front ones) to a round number or a clock time, and instead of a literal plural you get an approximate reading — "in the region of, around."
| Exact | Approximate (+ -lAr) |
|---|---|
| saat beş (five o'clock) | saat beşlerde — around five |
| saat on (ten o'clock) | saat onlarda — around ten |
| 1990 (the year) | 1990'larda — in the 1990s / around 1990 |
| kırk yaş (forty years old) | kırklı yaşlarda — in one's forties |
Seni akşam saat sekizlerde ararım, uygun mu?
I'll call you around eight in the evening — does that work?
Toplantı öğlenlerde başlıyormuş, tam saati bilmiyorum.
The meeting apparently starts around noon — I don't know the exact time.
For ages and decades there's a fuller idiom: kırklı yaşlar "the forties (of age)" uses kırklı ("forty-ish," from kırk + the adjective suffix -lı) plus the plural yaşlar. To say someone is in their forties, you put it in the locative:
Annem kırklı yaşlarında çok seyahat etmiş.
My mother traveled a lot in her forties.
O şarkılar seksenli yıllarda çok popülerdi.
Those songs were very popular in the eighties.
Because -lAr has a literal plural job too, context disambiguates. Çocuklar is just "children" (real plural); but saat beşlerde, where pluralizing a clock time makes no literal sense, can only be the approximate reading. That mismatch is your cue.
Otuzlu yaşlara geldim, artık geç yatamıyorum.
I've hit my thirties — I can't stay up late anymore.
kadar: "about, as much as"
kadar is a postposition meaning "as much as / up to," and one of its everyday uses is plain approximation — "about, around" a quantity. It follows the number directly.
Düğüne yüz kadar kişi geldi, salon ancak yetti.
About a hundred people came to the wedding — the hall barely fit them.
Buraya gelmesi bir saat kadar sürer.
It takes about an hour to get here.
Cebimde elli lira kadar bir şey var, yeter mi?
I've got about fifty lira on me — is that enough?
Kadar is your go-to for an approximate count of people, money, time, distance — anything you'd hedge with "about" in English. It's neutral in register and works in writing too. (For its comparative uses — "as big as," "as much as" — see gibi / kadar.)
civarında and dolaylarında: "in the region of"
civarında ("around, in the vicinity of") and the close cousin dolaylarında ("in the area of") are slightly more formal "about"s, especially common with prices, numbers, and clock times. They're built on relational nouns — civar "vicinity" — in the now-familiar izafet-plus-locative frame: civar-ı-nda "in its vicinity."
Daire iki milyon lira civarında, tam fiyatı sormadım.
The flat is around two million lira — I didn't ask the exact price.
Tören saat üç dolaylarında bitti.
The ceremony finished at around three o'clock.
Salonda iki yüz kişi civarında bir kalabalık vardı.
There was a crowd of around two hundred people in the hall.
Note the structure: the number comes first, then civarında trails it like a postposition. İki milyon civarında = "in the region of two million." It feels a notch more measured and official than kadar — you'll hear it from estate agents, newscasters, and anyone quoting a figure carefully.
falan / filan: "or so, and stuff"
Finally the loosest device. falan (and its reduplicated partner falan filan / filan) trails a phrase to throw a vague blanket over it — "or so, and such, and stuff, that kind of thing." After a number it means "or so / about"; after a noun or a list it means "and the like."
Yirmi kişi falan vardı, tam saymadım.
There were twenty people or so — I didn't count exactly.
Markete gidip ekmek, süt falan alacağım.
I'll go to the shop and get bread, milk, and stuff.
Akşam film izledik, biraz sohbet ettik falan.
In the evening we watched a film, chatted a bit, and so on.
Falan is firmly (informal) — it's the texture of casual speech and you'd trim it from formal writing. Falan filan doubles down on the vagueness, often with a dismissive shrug ("blah blah, and all that"). It can also soften a statement you don't want to commit to fully:
Seni aradım falan ama açmadın.
I called you and all, but you didn't pick up.
Combining them
These can stack for layered vagueness. A round-number plural plus falan, or kadar plus a -lAr time, are all natural:
Saat altılarda falan çıkarız herhalde.
We'll head out around six or so, most likely.
Otuz yıl kadar önce, ben daha çocukken olmuş bu.
This happened about thirty years ago, when I was still a child.
Common mistakes
❌ Saat beşler buluşalım.
The approximate-time plural needs the locative -DA to mean 'around five': saat beşlerde buluşalım.
✅ Saat beşlerde buluşalım.
Let's meet around five.
❌ Düğüne yüz kişiler geldi.
Pluralizing the noun here just sounds wrong — use yüz kadar kişi 'about a hundred people' for approximation.
✅ Düğüne yüz kadar kişi geldi.
About a hundred people came to the wedding.
❌ Daire iki milyon lira civarı.
As an 'about' phrase it needs the locative: civarında (in its vicinity), not bare civarı.
✅ Daire iki milyon lira civarında.
The flat is around two million lira.
❌ Sayın hocam, sınava yirmi öğrenci falan girdi.
falan is too casual for a formal address — use civarında or kadar: yaklaşık yirmi öğrenci / yirmi öğrenci civarında.
✅ Sayın hocam, sınava yirmi öğrenci civarında girdi.
Dear professor, around twenty students sat the exam.
The trap to retire first is the literal plural reading: seeing saat beşlerde and parsing "at the five o'clocks." There's only one five o'clock — the plural can't be literal, so it must be the approximate "around five." That mismatch is exactly how the device signals itself.
Key takeaways
- The plural -lAr on a round number or time means "around": saat beşlerde "around five," 1990'larda "in the 1990s," kırklı yaşlarda "in one's forties." There's no single English equivalent.
- kadar = neutral "about / as much as," used for counts of people, money, time: yüz kadar kişi "about a hundred people."
- civarında / dolaylarında = a more formal, precise-sounding "in the region of," built on izafet + locative: iki milyon civarında.
- falan / filan = casual (informal) "or so / and stuff," trailing a phrase or list: ekmek, süt falan.
- Match the register: falan for chat, kadar everywhere, civarında for careful or formal figures.
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Start learning Turkish→Related Topics
- Special Uses of the PluralB1 — Beyond counting: how -lAr marks families, generic statements, deference on titles, and the only optional agreement in the Turkish verb.
- gibi and kadar: Similarity and ExtentB1 — gibi means 'like / as if' and kadar means 'as…as / about / until' — and kadar quietly switches from genitive comparison to dative 'until' depending on what you mean.
- Telling the TimeA2 — How to tell the clock in Turkish — whole hours (Saat üç), 'at three' (Saat üçte), and the case contrast that drives minutes: accusative + geçiyor for 'past' (üçü beş geçiyor) versus dative + var for 'to' (üçe beş var).
- Reduplication: Emphatic, Echo, and DoublingB2 — Turkish repeats words to do real grammatical work: yavaş yavaş 'very slowly / gradually', teker teker 'one by one', and the m-echo kitap mitap 'books and such' — a productive colloquial device with no single-word English equivalent.