"Kedinin suyu var."
Translation:The cat has water.
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I must be missing something. Why is it suyu? Is it implied that it is ''the'' water?
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It is not 'the water', though it looks like the Accusative form of water (as in 'Ben suyu içerim.'- I drink the water.)
The sentence here describes an ownership: both owner and possessed item get an ending. On top of it, this sentence is constructed with 'var' (there is/it exists). For better understanding you have to turn the whole sentence around. You don't say 'The cat has water' in Turkish but literally
'The cat's water exists.'
The cat is the owner. It get's the Genitive ending -(n) l n : n - after a vowel ln- after kedi = in (4way harmony)
Kedi- n - in = the cat's
the water 'su' is owned. It therefore get's the possessed ending(= 3rd person sg possessive ending (s ) l (4way harmony )
Su - should get 's' because it ends in a vowel and 'u'.
But 'su' is an exception to the rule:
suyum - my water
suyun - your water
suyu - his /her water ( what we have in the sentence above)
suyumuz - our water
suyunuz - your water
suları (or onların suyu) - their water
Hope that helps
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Merhaba Kizim dieprinzessin, I love your jargon free, user friendly explanations. Teşekkürler. I have awarded you an ingot & voted like on your comment.
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Kedinin suyu var. Slightly different grammatical process (kedi-nin suyu var VS kedi-n-in suyu var) but outcome is the same phrase and pronunciation. :) Just have to understand it from context.
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I don't remember learning about all these "n"s... How are we supposed to know this?
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Look at the tips & notes for the Possessive section.
First, to translate "the cat's" from English to Turkish:
The genitive case ending is ln, where l is replaced by the vowel that follows 4-way vowel harmony. But if the root word ends in a vowel, we need to add buffer -n- between the word and the genitive case suffix, otherwise it would sound ridiculous.
So, following these steps, we get kedi +buffer n + genitive ending in = kedinin. This means "the cat's".
Now, to translate your cat's, it's a bit different. Once again start with kedi, then add the -n suffix to indicate that it is your cat.
Now add the genitive ending -in, but this time because your cat already ends with the letter n, we obviously don't need to add a buffer -n-.
Following these steps, we get to kedi + possessive ending n + genitive ending in = kedinin, translating to your cat's.
The result is the same for both: kedinin, but the process to get to the result is a bit different. I hope this helped, it's very confusing and took me a while to grasp so let me know if you have any more questions.
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the English as given in the "correct answer" as the cat has got water, is a very improper usage of the English language.(has got)
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If it was a dog, would it be a) "Köpeknin suyu var." or b) "Köpeğnin suyu var." or c) Köpeğin suyu var."?
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Why not "Kedin suyu var"? Can someone please explain this to me? Thanks
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I dont think so .... in what way shoud it be harmonized .. Look above to understand the whole story
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I still think "The cat has (got) the water" should also be accepted with an article,even if it's possessive
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Cat's water? I guess you can find your answers above in the other comments.
