"The dogs eat bread."
Translation:Köpekler ekmek yer.
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Why not ekmegi? I honestly can't tell if anyone else had asked this already, since this website doesn't work on the mobile side well. Can't wait for them to add turkish to the app.
The English sentence is "The dogs eat bread" which doesn't have accusative case on "bread". If it did, the English sentence would be "The dogs eat the bread."
Since "bread" is not in accusative, the Turkish translation will be "Köpekler ekmek yer" rather than the "Köpekler ekmeği yer". The -i at the end of "ekmeği" indicates accusative case, so, that would be wrong.
Does this help?
I think your understanding of the accusative case isn’t correct. In most languages that have it (e.g. Latin or German), the accusative is used for both definite and indefinite objects.
It’s actually the other way round: Turkish doesn’t mark the accusative on indefinite nouns, only on definite ones; but it’s still accusative. And since the indefinite accusative form is the same as the nominative, people treat it like the nominative.
You could say that English has the accusative, too, although it doesn’t mark it on nouns. In the personal pronouns, accusative still exists (‘I’ vs. ‘me’, ‘he’ vs. ‘him’).
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I always thought that a noun in English is already in the accusative when it is the object of a predicate. Perhaps I need to learn better English.
"The dogs-Köpekler" in the sentence above are the agents taking action. "Köpekleri" would make the word accusative. There is not an accusative word in the sentence.
In English you use the article to signify accusative in some cases but not always, which I believe is the reason for your confusion.
"köpekler ekmek yer-the dogs eat bread"
"köpekler ekmeği yer-the dogs eat the bread" --> here you can see "the" article acting as both roles.
I hope this helps!
why it is (yer) and not (yerler), since Köpekler is plural?
... I saw the answer given by FATSI_X ( yerler would usually be added to humans) but unfortunatelly I didn't find this rule in any turkish grammar book!
you say in your slogan that the goal of DUOLINGO is to teach languages. But if the rules of the language are not explained before or in parallel, how can one think that one will be able to learn and memorize them correctly? I showed the Turkish version of DUOLINGO to my Turkish native speaker university friends living in Turkey and they told me that there are many bugs, inaccuracies and strange expressions that are not used in the current language. I highly recommend that you review your Turkish course.
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Köpek = Dog. Just dog.
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Köpeği = THE dog. ( the K at the end changes to a ğ here because it's followed by the accusative -i )
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Köpekler = Dogs.
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Köpekleri = THE dogs.
The -i at the end marks it as the accusative case, this one. These specific dogs and no other group. Whereas "köpekler" is just a general non-specific group of any old dogs.
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Çilekler = any random bunch of strawberries.
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Çilekleri = Those specific strawberries, that are currently in the fridge to the left of the milk.
It's a bit rough, especially when you get to possessive form (at least for me), but you'll get the hang of it.
Hello Army974aa
The (accusative) case in Turkish is used to mark specific direct objects.
A specific direct object is one that uses the article “the.”
For example: Neyi açtı? - What did she open? Buzdolabını açtı - She opened the fridge.
Neyi özledi? - What did he miss? Okulu özledi. He missed school.
Yarın kimi arayacağım? - Who will I call tomorrow? Seni yarın arayacağım. - I will call you tomorrow.
Telefon (telephone) + "-u" (accusative suffix) Telefonu (the phone) - the last vowel was "o"
Çatal (fork) + "-ı" (accusative suffix) Çatalı (the fork) - the last vowel was "-a"
Thank you.
Have a look to those explanations in http://duolingo.com/comment/7738393 > accusative case.Accusative means that a noun "elma" for exemple is specific direct object "elmalari yerim" "i eat the apples", not any apples but the ones you have picked up yesterday in your orchard. Is it clear for you?