My acquaintance with kendi has been a difficult one. This is probably because its deceptive similarity with the English reflexive myself, yourself, himself… As soon as the learner falls asleep strange uses of kendi pop up from various texts and she realizes there are still a few eureka moments to come before this flexible pronoun is under control.

The first moment is there when you notice that there is an adjective kendi and a pronominal kendi which is the case with so many Turkish pronouns. Aha, that’s why you so often see it unconjugated. The adjective kendi simply means ‘own’. It takes the role of an attribute like any other adjective, but I don’t think you can ever see it as a predicative. That’s because it doesn’t carry an independent meaning. As an adjective it doesn’t show who the owner is, that is done by genitive case + possessive suffixes in the governing noun, kendi just stresses the quality of its main word as being someone’s own.

As soon as a possessive suffix is fixed to kendi we are talking about pronouns. The learner must notice that the form kend|i is already possessed by 3^rd person singular and even though you feel like adding another suffix –si to the end it’s not necessary (but not wrong either, I guess). Respectively, as kendi is already seen as a derived form it takes the pronominal –n- between the possessive suffix and the case ending.

But we are not done yet. As a reflexive pronoun, kendi conjugates perfectly in person and case. Bu hata kendimin. ‘This is a mistake that I made myself/my own mistake.’ Neden kendinizi bu kadar üzüyorsunuz? ‘Why do you get so upset yourself?” There is also an adverb derived from the same stem kendimce, kendince… ‘in one’s (own) opinion’.

kendi is often used as an emphatic pronoun. What gives it special strength is reduplication of the stem: Çocuk kendi kendini yıkamadı ‘The child washed himself (with his own hand)’. We must notice that this structure only works when there is a case ending in the second part of it: *kendi kendim is not a valid form for ‘myself’. Sometimes a dative form is used in places where you might expext nominative: Bu aptal kararı kendi kendine verdin ‘You made this stupid decision on your own’, Adaya kendi kendime yüzdüm ‘I in my own person swam to the island’. In these cases the translation might be ‘for one’s own account, personally’. Of course kendi- can be used alone, too, but then you don’t need a dative ending: Adaya kendim yüzdüm.

Sometimes it seems to me that kendi is used as a grammatical hanger, a quiet servant to the sentence structure. If you have extra suffixes in your hands and don’t know where to put them, kendi may come to help. Neden kendisinden korkuyorsun? ‘What are you afraid of?’ sounds odd in the learner’s ear: yes, we got used to seeing ablative ending close to korkmak but normally fixed to the stem which refers to the thing one is afraid of. But it seems that kendi- can make itself small enough to carry the ending without causing trouble in understanding.

Maybe this is the reason why the whole meaning of kendi- is difficult to catch. In some cases it can strongly emphasize a sentence constituent and in other cases it can hardly be seen.

Sağ olun, si++. I had better thank quickly before more mistakes are found.

Notes:

1. I can´t remember that I ever used lazım in its right place. Maybe there is no place for it?

2. patron bana...nasıl sunum yapılacağını öğretti: Can´t understand this correction. Could it be a misspelling? The dictionary gives sunuş, sunma for presentation.

3. olup olmadığını, olup olmadığını, olup olmadığını, olup olmadığını...: I hate to use emotions but this one really screams for one. Mixing gelmek and gitmek doesn´t shock me so much. (It´s just another way to see it.)

Sorry, they are many. But they are small. Time expressions mostly.

1. For the time being I´m living in a small town, but I hope to move soon. Șimdilik küçük bir şehirde yaşıyorum ama birazdan taşınmayı umuyorum.
2. She has been gone since yesterday. Dünkü günden beri gitmiş.
3. I´m going to Paris for two weeks. İki hafta için Paris’e gidiyorum.
4. My mother started work as a nurse in the 1960s. Annem 1960’larda hemşire olarak çalışmaya başladı.
5. In those days she lived in London. O günlerde Londra’da yaşıyordu.
6. Back then nurses were badly paid. O zaman hemşirelere kötü bir maaş ödendi.
7. At one time she lost her door key and had to stay in a hotel. Bir kerede kapının anahtarı kaybetip otelde kalmak zorundaydi.
9. I went shopping after I finished work. İş bittikten sonra çarşıya çıktım.
10. I played my new computer game but after a while I got bored with it. Yeni bilgisayar oyunumu oynadım ama bir müddetten sonra ondan sıkıldım.
11. The old man performed ablution before going to the mosque. Yaşlı adam camiye gitmeden önce aptes aldı.
12. The movie was showed from August to October. Film Ağustostan Ekime kadar gösterildi.
13. Later on I met some friends for pizza. Sonra arkadaşlarımla pizza için karşılaştım.
14. I waited for a while in the restaurant. Before long, the waiter came up and asked me if the dog barking outside was mine. Lokantada bir müddet bekledim. Yakında garson gidip bana dışarıda havlayan köpeğin benim olup olduğunu sordu.
15. Suddenly, I heard the door slam. Ansızın kapının çarptığını duydum.
16 At the same time my phone started to ring. Aynı zamanda telefonum çalmaya başladı.
17. The ex-president of France is still influential. Fransa’nın sabık başkanı daha da nüfuzludur.
18. A previous boss taught me how to make presentations. Eski bir patron bana sunuşlar yapmayı öğretti.
19. My late father painted watercolours. Merhum babam suluboya resimler yaptı.
20. I watch TV during the evening. Akşam süresince televizyon seyretirim.
21. We must finish the project within a year. Bir yıl içinde projeyi tamamlamalıyız.
22. There´s no time to lose. We´ve got to get going. İsraf etmek için zaman yok. Gitmemiz lazım.
23. We´ve run out of time on this project. Bu proje için zamanımız tükendi.
24. The UK is in a different time zone from the rest of Europe. Birleşik Krallık geri kalan Avrupadan ayrı zaman kuşağında bulunuyor.
25.They arrived just in time for the wedding. Düğün için tam zamanında gittiler.

It´s a completely unknown field for me but I guess I understand what you mean.

They say that a human being doesn´t use but a small percentage of his brain capacity and I believe this. Actually I feel it every day. Given the time and the effort each one of us could learn so much more.

In my experience there are only two things where brain shows it limits:

1. Learning new languages. Yes, you can learn but not the same way you learned when your mind was still a blank page. Learning a language later in life takes a lot of sorting out and organizing your thoughts and you will never be really fluent. I feel that the only languages I use with a relaxed mind are my mother tongue and English. All the other languages I was ever taught get mixed together in my mind. This is when I try to speak: of course I could analyse sentences on paper because I once worked on it.

2. Daily routines. We stick to our habits, even those which are harmful to us, with a stubbornness which is hard to explain. I think it´s not lack of determination or backbone, it´s brain chemistry.

Does one have a mother tongue in computer programming, too?

Thank you for your help, MarioninTurkey.

tunci. Thank you.

How do you express in Turkish time limits like

         1991-2011 (How is it read?)

         2. - 4.10. (How is it read?)

         from spring to autumn

         from March to June

         from dawn to afternoon

         from seven to four?

Maybe things are changing but I still think it´s not easy to accuse a woman for such a crime. It´s men who are abusers, as women just teach young boys mysteries of life.