|
Quite often in Turkish, with the endings, a specific word can mean more than one thing, and you have to make sense of it from the context.
e.g. evleri
could be
ev+leri = their house
or
evler+i = his/her houses
or
evler+i= houses (object of a noun)
or
evler+i= houses as a compound noun
It is usually obvious from the whole sentence:
Evlerini satacaklar = They are going to sell their house (clue is the "lar" on the end of satacak: we are talking about "them")
Ahmet'in evleri çok = Ahmet has lots of houses
(clue is Ahmet'in: we are talking abut Ahmet)
Evleri boyatacak mısınız = Are you going to have the houses painted?
(clue is boyatmak which makes the noun take the objective ending)
Şelale Evleri'ne gideceğiz= We are going to Şelale Evleri (Waterfall Houses= the name of a housing estate)
(clue is Evleri and the previous word have a capital letter that shows it is a proper noun)
When I first started learning Turkish I thought this was confusing, but we have the same in English: words mean more than one thing but it is obvious from the context which one we mean.
For example, yesterday a lady about 50 came in to the store and she bought some children's Christmas books. She was wondering whether she should buy some more and she said to us, to explain why she was still thinking "I don't know whether I will have any more children." We all then laughed with her when she realised that, taken in the wrong context, we might have thought she was talking about getting pregnant, rather than jus how many children would come with their families to her house on Christmas Day!
|
