I know the uses of diye in principal: though it looks like a pure mark of indirect speech it is very much used for expressing more abstract meanings, purpose for instance. My question is how much is it really needed for reported speech? Can you do without it? Maybe I´m wrong but only two cases come to my mind where I can´t think of replacing diye with anything else:

* When the speaker wants to report something to the letter. It´s like the reported part of the sentence was irreversibly fixed and the speaker needs to find a way to end the sentence properly without changing anything of what was already said.

         Yarın gel diye bir telgraf çekti.

* In written language when the citation is written word by word and when a verb other than demek denoting utterance is used:

         Kaplumbağa  -  Deli misin?  -  diye bağırmış.

I wonder if diye is used at all in other types of reported speech where infinite verb forms are used and where changes in tenses, pronouns etc. take place. Is it?

Hello, Mavili. I´m glad you dropped by. What comes to Turkish language I have come to the conclusion that who is once a learner will always be a learner. But I like it that way. Enthusiasm is one form of happiness.

What I know about iken or its suffixed form -(y)ken it can stick to adjectives at least, like in

         Ben hastayken uyurum ´While I´m sick I sleep´

or even to suffixed nouns but you will have to wait until one of the experts comes and clears it for us.

Notes:

1. Expressions of time are difficult. The differences are small and in many sentences I can’t give reasons why I chose to prefer one to another. I thought to myself that maybe –diğinde is the kind of general ‘when’ which can’t go very much wrong but I’m not sure.

2. Kahire’ye ilk kez gittiğimde şehir ile tarafından korkutuldum. 

> Kahire´ye ilk gidişimde, şehir beni ürküttü.

* I knew that there is an –iş-infinitive in Turkish but for the first time I see a place where it is needed.

* Ok, you say active voice is better but a question rises from the agent of this passive sentence. But I wonder what happened to şehir before it could turn into an agent. I mean if we change

         Köpek|ten korktu

into a causative clause, is it really going to be

         Köpek korkuttu

where the dog is a real subject? (So it seems when I look at it now. I guess I hereby explained the causative to myself.)

3. akşam yemek için = to eat in the evening 

akşam yemeği için = for the dinner

I guess I understood this now: the latter is izafet + için, and yemek in the previous one is understood as a verb, isn’t it? Actually it is a simple but amazing example of what a little possessive suffix can do.

4. çevrimiçi ‘online’ is an adjective, isn’t it, ‘the one who is in the circle’? And ‘offline’ is çevrimdışı. Of course.

5. The most frustrating mistakes which I think I shouldn’t be repeating any more are those in morphology.  Like the dative sg. 2. personal pronoun  sene. I’m glad it delighted you, si++.

It seems to be one step forward and two steps back for me. It´s good that you drop me down once a week because too much pride is an obstacle to learning.

I have a file in Word where I throw interesting sentences whenever I find them and it seems that your sentence ended up in the same pile. See, I couldn´t return it back to the form it was in your head.

I´ll chew the feedback for a while and maybe come back with some questions. Sağ olun, si++!

I was sure it was about blood transfusion.

Expressions of time mostly and some mixed stuff:

1.      I washed the dishes when my daughter fell asleep. Kızım uykuya daldığında bulaşıkları yıkadım.

2.      We won’t be able to finish the painting before he arrives. O varmadan önce boyamayı tamamlamayacağız.

3.      I have played tennis since I was a young boy. Çocuk oldum olalı tenis oynuyorum.

4.      Even though it was expensive, he bought the leather jacket. Pahalı olmasına rağmen deri cekedini satın aldı.

5.      The first time I went to Cairo, I was intimidated by the city. Kahire’ye ilk kez gittiğimde şehir ile korkutuldum.

6.      The second time I played tennis, I began to have fun. İkinci kez tenis oynuyorken zevk almaya başlattım.

7.      When my older sister called and apologised for being late, the family had already eaten lunch. Ablam geç kaldığıma pişmanım diye aradiği zaman aile halen öğle yemeğini bitirmedi.

8.      While I was doing my homework my sister tried to catch the cat which had run away. Ben ev ödevimi yapıyorken kız kardeşim kaçmış olan kediyi tutmaya çalışıyordu.

9.      We won’t have finished our work by the time their train arrives. Trenleri varmadan önce işimizi bitirmeyecekmişiz.

10.  As soon as I hear from Hasan, I will give you a telephone call. Hasan’dan haber alır almaz sene telefon edeceğim.

11.  Whereas you have lots of time to watch TV, I have very little time indeed. Senin televizyon seyretmek için çok zamanın varken benim gerçekten az zamanım var.

12.  Meryem is rich while I am poor. Meryem zengin oysa ben yoksulum.

13.  Our son had to leave early since his train left at 8.30. Treni 8.30’de ayrıldığından dolayı oğlumuz erken terketmeliydi.

14.  I´m studying hard because I want to pass my exam. Sınavımı vermek için çok öğreniyorum.

15.  As long as you stay in town, why don´t you come for dinner? Șehirde kaldığın sürece akşam yemek için neden gelmezsin?

16.  He works a lot of overtime because his rent is so expensive. Kira bedeli o kadar pahalı olduğu için fazla mesai yapıyor.

17.  He will tell us as soon as he decides if they are going to come or not. Gelip gelmeyecekleri kararını verir vermek bize söyleyecek.

18.  By the time he finished the phone call, I was fed up with waiting. O telefon konuşmasını bitirmeden önce beklemekten bıktım.

19.  Look at the signed in users many of whom have some strange text in their profiles. Çoğunun profillerinde tuhaf bir yazı bulunduklar girmiş olan kullanıcılara bakın.

Translating or not translating Allah is an interesting question. I happened to watch the wedding of Prince William from the Alarabiya channel. The church seremony was very religious and the reporter loyally translated every blessing and prayed into Arabic. And not any Arabic: she was using strong Islamic terminology which sounded humoristic because the couple was not exactly those who pious muslims would call mu´minin.

In Turkish, you have this word Tanrı. Is it neutral in colour? Does it express deity in general or does it have a paganic tone?

Where do you find these interesting links always? I have a personal experience about dialect continuums from the days I was interrailing in Europe. Of course when you take the ship from Turku to Stockholm you cross a strict language border but when you begin to move southwards little by little you don´t really notice when Swedish changes into Danish, Dutch and German. If you know Swedish and a little bit of German you can travel until the Alps with no difficulty. Populists often demand that compulsory Swedish in Finnish schools should be canceled but I´m strongly against it partly because of this experience of dialect continuum.

Finnish and Estonian are different languages. They are not mutually understandable spontaneously, but they are still so close that considerable effort is not needed to break the language barrier.

While reading this article I impulsively remembered that I heard about Dallas and Dynasty  somewhere else recently (the younger members probably never heard of them). It was an interview of Toomas Ilves, the recently re-elected Estonian president who said that while his country lived under Soviet occupation the Finnish television where Dallas and Dynasty were shown was a window to the west for the Estonian people (our languages are closely related) and when they finally separated from the Soviet Union they were a step ahead from other eastern block countries because of this early influence of western TV channels.

It´s interesting to hear that these TV seria have influenced the modernising of Turkey also. I don´t know if its good news but its news anyway. We should never underestimate entertainment.

But in my opinion one thing was forgotten in the article. The Arab are not jumping from their veiled middle ages straight to Turkish liberalism. The Egyptian have introduced a suitable combination of romance, chicanery and vice to the huge Arab audience in their films and soaps for a long time. As the Egyptian are mostly godfearing people the stories are of course quite tame to the western taste: you know, the husband takes another younger wife and children are causing troubles while the sobbing, irreversibly aging first wife gathers all the sympathy. Interestingly, a few years ago there was a very popular TV series called Hajj Mitwelli (acted by the famous Nur Al Sharif) in which a rich retailer had four wives, all living in the same block of flats. The production was mostly criticized for introducing a happy family and not showing the misery of polygamy.

Somehow I feel like there won´t be any more Dallases which can effect millions of people just like that. The field of entertainment has split into small pieces and TV is hardly the thing that can unite nations. Maybe the fall of Husni Mubarak was a symptom of this. You can´t mute the demanding masses of people by showing them some cheap circus amusement.

Yes, Mavili, it was originally your sentence. I took the freedom to borrow it because it was a clear one.

I found the information about this structure controversial (maybe I was mixing things because often -dan dolayı takes simple nouns and verbal nouns) but now it´s clear. Thanks to you, si++!