I´m trying to learn the conditional, and of course I have questions Here´s one, for starters, about this sentence:

Ben yardým etmesem siz bu iþi biteremediniz.

I want to translate it as "If I didn´t help, you couldn´t have finished this job" (hopefully I´m not too far off lol). What I have a question about it biteremediniz. Is this supposed to be from bitmek? What tense is this? I mean it looks like the past tense combined with the aorist combined with the potential ... ugh. So to me it looks like bit(stem)-er(aorist)-e(can´t)-me(negative)-diniz(past tense). Do I understand it correctly? Why not just bitemediniz? Or bitemezsiniz?

Thanks for any help in advance.

 You translated it right.

This is good and very formal Turkish.

Bitiremediniz: you would not have been able to finish.

bitir: finish

-e-: ability

-me-: negative

-di: past tense

-iniz: you

Note:

bitmek: to end (something comes to an end) e.g. film bitti

bitirmek: to finish something else. e.g. Ali çýkolatýlý pastayý bittirdi.

So your examples of bitemediniz and bitemezsiniz don´t work for this reason.

iþ bitmez: the job never ends

iþi bitmezsin: you never finish the work

bitiremezsiniz: would be more present/future tense

You cannot finish

bitemediniz doesn´t work at all.  "iþ bitemedi" would, and this means the work would never have been able to be finished"

Ben yardým etmesem siz bu iþi biteremediniz.

PS. I would have found it more usual to say

Ben yardým etmeseydim bu iþi biteremezdiniz.

If I hadn´t helped, you wouldn´t have been able to finish the job.

I wonder if its a typo and should read bitiremediniz from the verb bitirmek  to finish, I think causative of bitmek.

 Agree about difference between bitirmek and bitmek: see the middle of post 2.

Whoop was writing while the full explanation was posted!

Thank you so much for the explanations, I really like how you break it down. I think you both are right about the typo (I´m sure the typo was made by the book me lol), it does make much more sense with bitirmek than bitmek.

In the lesson explanation about the conditional it conjugated it as fiil+se/sa+þahýs eki, but I do see in other examples and in what you wrote above that se/sa can be attached to other tenses. Do you know when the conditional would be used without being attached to any tense? Is it interchangeable?

Thanks again

Conditional is quite complicated. There is not just one conditional.

Try to think about it in your native language. I don´t know if that is English: for me it is, so I would say:

there is an "if" where I am talking about possibilities for the future, depending on different things that happen in the future.

e.g. if it rains tomorrow I will not go outside

there is an "if" where I am talking about possibilities for now, depending on different things that happened in the past. I don´t know whether the thing did or didn´t happen in the past

e.g. if Mary caught the bus she will be home by now.

there is an "if" where I am talking about possibilities for the future, depending on whether something is true or not now.

e.g. if you are innocent, you will be found guilty

there is an "if" where I am talking about possibilities for the now, depending on whether something is true or not now

e.g. If you are lying I cannot help you.

there is an "if" where I am talking about what might have been if something different had happened ("if only")

e.g. If I had told you about the wedding you wouldn´t have gone to America.

All of these (and probably a whole lot of other cases!!!!) are different forms of -se-/-sa- in Turkish.

Some examples:

Ali mutluysa: if Ali is happy   (-sa added to an adjective)

yaðmur yaðsa: if it rains (-sa added to the verb root)

yalan söylüyorsan: if you are telling lies (-sa added to the present tense)

partiye geleceksen: if you are going to come to the party (-sa added to the future tense)

Peter´e söylediyse: if he told Peter (-sa added to the past tense)

Peter´e söyleseydi: if he had told Peter (this is equivalent to the "if only": he didn´t tell Peter, but if he had, then .....)

You just have to study each one separately ....

PS Also, in formal writing or poetry you often see "ise" written separately.

e.g. Hava güneþli ise

This means the same as "-se"

Hava güneþli ise = Hava güneþliyse = If the weather is sunny

Sometimes, to strengthen the "if" you may see the word Eðer or Þayet also used, but you still have to use the "-se-/-sa-".

Þayet hava güneþliyse

Eðer hava güneþliyse

You can also use "taktirde" for conditional: it literally means "in the case that"

Havanýn güneþli olduðu taktirde ....

And once again, thank you so much.  

I´m hoping it´ll all fall into place eventually if I keep at it.