They are just amazing people, aren´t they? And so are you, Henry. Please, go on with this thread, I´m sure it is useful for many learners even as an encouragement. I may add something, too, if one day I don´t have anything to do. Turkish sentences may look complicated but with intent analyse it´s possible to tame them.

I have found one method which is not so scholarly but which sometimes helps. Read the sentence loud. Read it many times. You may catch the rhythm in it.

Interesting post, Henry. I notice you analyse the sentence quite linearly, from left to right. I am surprised it works so well. But why shouldn´t it, that´s what the speaker does also, puts one word after another... I always try to start with the main constituents and their modifiers. Maybe I am too much attracted to my habits.

Memo about değil (Göksel - Gerslake, earlier threads):

I  değil negating nominal phrases:

değil is used for negating nominal phrases. You find it combined with –(y)di, -(y)miş and -(y)se, -dir, person markers and –(y)ken.

Nejat gençliğinde bu kadar inançlı değildi. ‘Nejat wasn’t this stubborn when he was young.’

Evde değilsin sandık. ‘We thought you were not at home.’

Anneleri evde değilken çok daha derli toplu oluyorlar. ‘They are much more tidy when their mother is not at home.’

II  değil negating verbal sentences

Sometimes değil can also negate a verbal sentence. Instead of saying simply

Her yere taksiyle gitmiyorum ‘I don’t go everywhere by taxi’

the speaker can repudiate the real or imagined assumptions of the listener saying

Her yere taksiyle gidiyor değilim. ‘It is not the case that I go everywhere by taxi.’

The next example is a combination of –me- and değil negations. Two negations make a strong affirmation:

Bu sınavlarda neden bu kadar güçlük çekildiğini anlamıyor değilim. ‘I understand why people have so much difficulties with these exams.’

III  değil in elliptic sentences

değil is one of the basic means of constituent negation in Turkish. It replaces the negative predicate in elliptic sentences which contain an identical but affirmative predicate:

Olanları görmedim değil, ama tam hatırlayamıyorum. ‘It’s not that I didn’t see what happened, it’s just that I can’t quite remember.’

Büyük değil, küçük bir elma istemiştim. ‘I hadn’t asked for a big apple but a small one.’

The Turkish ‘let alone’ construction can be constructed with the help of değil also. It is important to add değil in front of the less probable alternative. The contrasted constituent has a strong sentence stress and is followed by bile:

Değil sinemaya gitmek, televiziyon bile seyredecek zamanım yok. ‘I don’t have the time to even watch TV, let alone going to the cinema.’

I understand it was not about being right or wrong here. sev|me|y|emez|sin and the way its use was described here looks to me like a temporary formation, made for that certain situation and then forgotten. It happens in language. Words like this are the fruit of the productiveness of the morphology.

The funny thing here is that for me as a learner it was not difficult to understand it. I could produce something like that myself. I could even add another negation to the end and make it sev|me|y|eme|y|emez|sin if I tried to say ´it can´t be true that you can not not love´. Very much of the possible theoretical constructions are not in use in real language, especially in the normative language.

Thank you, srhat, for your participating in this long thread which in the beginning was ment to be just a quick question.

I understand these structures are not needed most of the time but it´s good to know them. I remember just recently having wondered how to express something like this.

So, if var and yok are used, gerek must be a noun here.

Çok teşekkür ederim, gokuyum. A couple of things:

1. Ölmüş babası, geçinmek için 7000 kez aynı manzarayı yapan bir ressam olan ölmüş babası, erkek çocuğunun bir polis memur olmaya karar vermesini çok beğenmemedi. I thought I will ease the structure by saving the long introduction after the subject, but it wasn´t a good choice. Could I take this as a rule?

2. Wallander, konusu güneyli Skåne´in ilindeki  güney eyaletindeki Malmö şehrinin 60 kilometre güneydoğusundaki Ystad kasabasının içiyle etrafında geçen birçok esrarlı romanın kahramandır. Does your correction mean ´in the south of Skåne´ or ´in Skåne which is the southern province of Sweden´? I was trying to say the latter.

And still one thing, gokuyum:

Do you know Henning Mankell? Are his works translated into Turkish? Mankell was one of the well-known culture persons who was present on the accompanying vessel of Mavi Marmara a couple of years ago.

Where would I be without my grammar books?

Oh, thank you, boys, you are being so helpful. I will soon hit my teeth to the screen. Henry, for some reason I think about sour lingonberries every day.

Mavili, I´m fine really. I can stay just about anywhere. When you live in a country for a longer time you begin to see how life really is there. But a culture shock is likely to happen, no matter how prepared you are. There is a period of discomfort. Sure there is delicious food in Egypt, it´s my mouth that doesn´t want to take it.

My Try:

çok geç anladığım yanlışlarım kadar sevdim... I loved as much as was the amount of  those mistakes of mine which I understood too late.

nefesinden düşen kelimeler yakıyor şimdi ruhumu, The words that fall from your breathe are now burning my soul

masumiyetini yitirsede kader sahnesinde oynadığımız
bu oyun UYANDIRMA beni.. Even if I lost my innocence this game that we played on the stage of destiny DON’T WAKE ME UP

bırak ısıtayım parmak uçlarını,kirpiklerinden düşen hüzne tutmuştum gönlümü. Let me warm my fingertips, I had kept my soul close to the sorrow that dropped from my eyelashes.

çünkü ben seni seninle hüzne bürünen because I am the one that has wrapped you with yourself into sorrow

umudum kadar sevdim... I loved as much as I had hope.

Not clear for me at all, it´s better if someone will do it over again.