[Grammar] Accusative Case

[AlexinNotTurkey]

Welcome to your second of the 7 cases in Turkish. You have already been using the nominative case to describe subjects and some objects.

The accusative case in Turkish is used to mark specific direct objects. What does this mean exactly? A specific direct object is one that uses the article the.
For example:

As you can see above, the accusative is only used when referring to the newspaper. General direct objects do not take the accusative or the plural suffix. Adding these to general direct objects in Turkish is simply not correct.

The accusative case is never used on subjects in Turkish. Do not translate every specific noun phrase with the accusative case. There is no way to distinguish between "a cat" and "the cat" when the subject of the sentence by using the accusative case. Only when they are direct objects is this possible.

[Ektoraskan]

One easy way to remember which letters change is learning the word "ketçap". It means "ketchup" and it's a useful word too! The consonants of "Ketçap" are K T Ç P. They become voiced and turn into Ğ (or sometimes G) D C B.

[yasmineyusuf]

What if the direct object is plural? "The newspapers", for example?

[mizinamo]

Then you use both plural and accusative suffixes: Gazeteleri okuyor. "He is reading the newspapers."

[Saraswathy12]

Thanks!

[sepetdalv]

I think this should be on sticky. Vowel Harmony in Turkish is so important and it should be learned at an early stage. Without knowing about vowel harmony, people would have no clue why it's benim, not benım, for example.

[AlexinNotTurkey]

We don't want to crowd up everyone's discussion feed with lots of stickies. :) It is in a (hopefully) easy enough place!

[tu.8zPhLD72zzoZN]

Many languages have a Page that is stickied that simply provides links to all the individual grammar pages, so this page is accessed through the Turkish Grammar Portal. It would be nice though to have a link back to the main page. So here that is: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/7738932

[UmarHussai3]

Thanks for this!!

[GordonRobb]

Quick question, I get (mostly) when it should be used, but should it be used in conguntion with That. For example would 'that book' be su kitabi (with the right letters)?

[mizinamo]

Only if it's in the accusative because it's a direct object.

Şu kitabı okuyorum - I read that book.

but: Şu kitap kırmızı - that book is red. "The book" is the subject here, so the accusative case is inappropriate.

[besherat]

This is a very useful explanation.

[luciopaifer]

thank you so much

[Saraswathy12]

Got it! Thanks.

[RolffSVill]

I have a question! When do you use i and ı for marking the accusative case? Like in the words yağı and şekeri. What's the difference between both of them?

[mizinamo]

Vowel harmony: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/9041808

It can also be -u or -ü -- the accusative case uses 4-way vowel harmony.

(There is also 2-way vowel harmony, e.g. in the plural endings -lar/-ler.)

[Rimas.jana]

it would be simpler if learners listen to Turkish so much to automatically understand the 7 cases

[AshishIyer1]

Do you suggest any videos that involve conversations? Any link?

[Saraswathy12]

There are seven case?! I started seeing Turkish dizis. Now after two years of watching Turkish shows, I am able to broadly pick up a lot of words and understand the context of what is being said- even if I dont get every single word or phrase. I decided to formally earn the language now and it's a lot easier when one already can follow the language a bit.

[nico_lrx]

Thank you for this!

[chimak]

still helpful

[FaizRahmad]

so gazeteyi means the newspaper as in atabic we add al so its become the...

[YnaUZpIJ]

So how do we distinguish between "a cat" and "the cat" ?

[DaudCaprino]

(bir) kedi – (a) cat,
kediyi – the cat

[Lizmichel19]

So accusatives are not use in Turkish as often?