What is the difference between ilk and birinci???

ilk....... relates to time
birinci .... relates to rank and quality

how would you say the first page

I think..(as a VERY very beginner)

Birinci sayfasi, because it is the first in 'rank' of a book or whatever. Not the first in time. When talking about Spring, the season, you would say ilkbahar because it is stated in time. And if youre talking about internet, the first page, the homepage, is Ana sayfa if im correct.

But ey, native speakers, what if you want to say first page mentioned as in, the first page made? Then it's about time..

'ilk' vs. 'birinci'

Semantically there is no much difference between these two words.. However, in terms thier use in practice, they differ slightly.. There may be many more, but the most common two differences that I can think of are as follows:

i) Support for plural names
Both 'ilk' and 'birinci' are adjectives, so they come before a name that they describe.
Adjectives in general can describe names in both plural and singular form.
However, the name described by 'birinci' cannot be in plural form, it is almost always in singular form while 'ilk' can go with both plural and singular forms of names.
ex: ilk sayfa (correct)
ilk sayfalar (correct)
birinci sayfa (correct)
birinci sayfalar (incorrect!)

In the specific example you asked, it is ok to use either of 'ilk' or 'birinci' as the name coming after the adjective is in isingluar form.

ii) Point of stress
When you say 'ilk' you implicitly divide the space of objects into two: the ones coming/happening at the beginning, and the others.
So, you emphasize the things/incidents coming into occurrence at the beginning, and really do not care about the ordering in the remaining part/time, because what matters to you is/are the one(s) at the starting point.
On the other hand, when you use 'birinci', you divide the space of objects that you are referring into equally emphasized parts wach of which represent an individual object of type you are referring. And, you have, birinci (first), ikinci (second), ucuncu (third) and so on. In this way, you are just ordering objects without giving a special emphasis to any of the objects since what matters is just to give an ordering of the obejcts.


This may be a little bir confusing and up in the air, but I guess to see the nuance, you need to practice and may not be able to get it fully by just studying the language from books. If it is confusing forget about the second heuristic as the first one should do in most of the cases.

ali

Yup - I think it is a bit of a nuance that can only be properly learned through exposure to the underlying culture behind the language........

One day that will happen I hope!

Hehehe.. let's go according the old rule.. who comes first, eats first (i don't know how this one is in English.. this is just a bad translation of the Dutch one, but im sure it's international )

No wait.. we shouldnt queue but go in a circle and help eachother (a) How noble is that!