Ridley Scott, Gladiator, UK/USA 2000

Wolfgang Petersen, The Perfect Storm, USA 2000

Tony Scott, Déjà Vu, USA 2006

Nick Castle, Dennis the Menace, USA 1993

Turkish numbers plus a bunch of pronouns like kaç ´how many´, birkaç ´a few´, her ´every´, az ´few´, biraz ´little´, çok ´much, many´  -  maybe someone can provide you with a complete list  -  always take a singular noun. It´s a rule which you can and must generalise:

               Ankara´da çok/bir milyon/kaç... araba/turist/kedi... var

as you suggested.

There is some talk about it in this thread. Look what tunci has answered to a similar question:

                      http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTitle_53283

I was about to apologize you, Ivo_G, because your thread has changed into a long discussion about this and that. It happens sometimes. Feel free to open a new thread if it bothers you.

MyTry:

Büyük bir ihtiyaç içindeyim. Lütfen bunu kardeşine anlatabilir misin?

ister...ister is a frozen pair of words that means ´whether...or´.

ekle|r = stem + AOR

ekle|mez|siniz = stem + NEG AOR + pl 2nd ´you don´t add´

The personal ending is not repeated but added to the second verb only.

If it was

ekle|y|e|mez|siniz = stem + BUFF + POT + NEG AOR + pl 2nd

and it would mean ´you cannot add´.

My Try:

Türkçesi: Hayır, arkadaş öner dedi önerdim. Siz bilirsiniz ister ekler ister eklemezsiniz.

İngilizcesi: No, a friend told me to suggest, I suggested. You know whether you add him/her or not.

I understand what you mean, lemon. A believer is not after worldly power. But we are talking about rulers who want to justify their deeds with arguments like cultural heritage or religion.

My late teacher of Russian literature stressed that the doctrine of three Romes lived in Russia until the communist era and that the Orthodox symbols were as well used by bolsheviks. The names changed but the stories told were the same.

The reason I brought up the issue here was Istanbul which is one of the main scenes of European history.

Super. gokuyum, this is approximately what I suggested in 2a.

I have tried to read carefully everything that natives have said in this thread. To sum up everything as I have understood it I noticed the following:

The problem about the structure 35 yaş|ı|n|da|yım was the adjective nature of Turkish numerals. In a compound they don’t demand a POSS in the next noun. For a while I was suspecting this because all adjectives as a matter of fact can be used as nouns. But it seems that numbers are especially sensitive adjectives: they hardly ever stand on their own, there has to be a noun after them (tane, kişi). The problem remains.

As the POSS in yaş|ı|n|da|yım can’t be motivated by the compound it has to be motivated by something else. I think there are two alternatives that have been mentioned in the course of this discussion. Actually one of them has been shot down already but I still try to rise it up:

1. Analogy of cases where the expression of measure is between the numeral and the quality, like 1.80 (meter) boy|u|n|da|yım.

2. Ellipsis.

a) There is something that we can’t see between 35 and yaşındayım. A measure. yil, yaş? In this case yaş in yaşındayım wouldn’t mean ‘year’ but ‘age’ (which is its first equivalent in some dictionaries). The structure would be like in the boy thing in nr 1.

b) There is something that we can’t see before 35. A genitive marked noun: something like yaşın, yıllarımın, zamanın… I suggested this but scalpel said in that case the numeral should be the ordinal 35inci. Is it impossible to imagine that it once was ordinal but it was simplified? In other languages I have seen processes like this. It seems like a very logical development because the ordinal marker is nothing but a burden from the point of view of information. But if something like this really happened there should be marks of it in old litteral language, I suppose.

My knowledge is limited but a learner can speculate as much as she wants. If she has the guts.

This name confusion makes me think of the great significance Istanbul has in the history of Europe. I don’t know if everyone is familiar with the doctrine of the Third Rome:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Rome

Europeans never really came to an agreement which city is the Third Rome, the holder of the legacy of the First and the Second Rome, that carries on the torch of pure Christianity and best European heritage lightening the rest of the world. Maybe the strongest claims came from Moscow. Even today right-wing populists say fight against the invasion of Islam is fight for the Third Rome.

No matter where the third Rome is, the Second will always be Nova Roma, the city that is located on the Bosphorus strait. Whether you Turks like it or not.