Sigh.

What is lost is not time but what is in our hands (i.e. our opportunities).

Yes, this is probably as close as we can get. Technically it is a very classical passive construction, though. The causative -DIr- makes o the object and the passive -Il- returns it into a subject. These markings are in the sentence for a reason and you can´t really play with them.

Such a language is Turkish.

My Try:

Density of Worship

In Turkey, the amount of those people who perform ritual prayers or invocations more than once a day (in addition to 27 per cent doing it five times a day) is 42 per cent while 44 per cent visit the mosque at least once a week. The rate of those who pay alms or fast is higher. 72 per cent of the people pay alms, 84 per cent fast. 44 per cent go to the mosque on a regular basis, and 25 per cent say that they go to the mosque only for the congregational prayer on Fridays.

I wish I could help you.

This is what Turkish: a Comprehensive Grammar (Göksel - Kerslake, 2005.) says about the secondary uses of POSS sg 3rd. What you are talking about is marked with (iii), meaning pronominal use of words representing different word classes.

"The suffix -(s)I has a number of functions in addition to those that it shares with the

other possessive suffixes:

(i) it marks the head of a noun compound: düğün pastası ‘wedding cake’

(ii) it marks the head of a partitive construction: kitaplardan üç tanesi ‘three of

the books’

(iii) it forms pronominals from a variety of word classes: burası ‘here’, içerisi

‘inside’, eskisi ‘the old one’, hiçbiri(si) ‘none of them’

(iv) it appears on (impersonal) verbal nouns which contain -mA: okuması zor ‘[it]

is difficult to read’

(v) it occurs in some composite suffixes: anlamazmışçasına ‘as if

uncomprehending’ "

Turkish pronouns are so often possessive marked adjectives. There is a long thread about it on this site with the headline "On Pronouns".

Unfortunately the image doesn´t show, at least for me.

Odd.

Ok, you say the last sentence, AlphaF. I can´t catch the spirit of it.

My Try:

The sun that rises every morning didn´t rise this morning. My hands became stars which came out of yours. Those eyes which used to scatter light were filled with years/age....

...AND THEN THERE IS TROUBLE:

1. What is the subject of duymaz? Is it

a) ağlama duymaz something like ´crying is not heard´ but then we should suggest duymak is used here in an ergative manner (mixing active and passive voices) which is not so easy to believe OR

b) shall we take the subject from the previous sentence: o gözler ağlama duymaz. The problem is in this case we should give duymak a quite wide meaning like ´feel, to be aware of´.

2. The phrase bir varmış bir yok oldu obviously plays with its similary with the words that initiate a fairy tale, ´once upon a time´. But maybe it rather should be interpreted here as something like ´just like something existed and yet didn´t exist´.

I give up.

This is how we all learned to create an English passive sentence.

They gave him this nickname. > This nickname was given to him.

The basic change is the object taking the position of the grammatical subject.

It works the same way in Turkish:

Ona bu lakabı taktılar. > Ona bu lakap takıldı.

But in English it is possible also to rise another essential modifier of the predicate to the subject position as well, like in

They gave him this nickname. > He was given this nickname.

But you shouldn’t try it in Turkish. It just somehow wouldn’t work. Am I right?

My Try:

There are some things.

You can´t explain them in speaking.

You can´t explain them in writing.

You can´t explain them by looking at one another.

That´s just the way it is: you can´t explain them.