“Excuse me” in Kyrgyz is кечиресиз. It works both as an apology and as a polite way to get attention: кечиресиз, суроо берсем болобу? — “excuse me, may I ask a question?”. A stronger form is кечирим сурайм, “I apologise”.
The root кечир- means “to forgive”; -есиз is the polite ending. To one person you know well it is кечир. The “ch” is as in “chair”, and the vowels are not reduced: ke-chi-re-SIZ.
Кечир — the short form for someone you are on familiar terms with. The polite form is кечиресиз.
Start with кечиресиз, exactly like “excuse me…”. For example: кечиресиз, суроо берсем болобу? — “excuse me, may I ask a question?”.
Кечиресиз is the everyday “excuse me”; кечирим сурайм is “I apologise”, a more serious formula when you are genuinely at fault.
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