"Oğlum üniversiteyi bitirince mühendis olacak."

Translation: My son will be an engineer when he finishes university.

[Azhdaha]

As far as I know, bitirmek normally requires the accusative (-i hali), but I'd love to get this confirmed as well.

Colloquially, I've heard "üniversite bitirmek" though, but was told it wasn't "proper" grammar.

[Selcen_Ozturk]

yes! Although Turkish is pretty straightforward, it is not always. Some verbs always require the accusative case. This is also true for "sevmek". We would say "kitapları severim" although we mean books in general...

[orde90]

üniversite bitirmek is perfectly proper. it means finishing a university. üniversiteyi bitirmek means finishing the university and in this example since the university is a known, specific university (his university) we use accusative form.

In English you can sometimes omit 'the' but that doesn't mean that the object is not specific and therefore the acusative should not be used in the Turkish translation. I would say always stick with the accusative as long as the English translation doesn't have an indefinite article or plural ending.

[Shahrazad26]

But it's a little funny that "the university" is not accepted.

[orde90]

yes, 'the university' should be accepted.

by the way I just realized I made a small mistake in my comment. Üniversite bitirmek would translate to 'finish a university' while Üniversiteyi bitirmek would be 'finish university' or 'finish the university'. I edited my comment.

[Shahrazad26]

Yes, it does accept it, my bad.

[AneurinEE]

Why does üniversite need the accusative suffix here - is it 'triggered' by the verb bitirmek like you see with sevmek etc?

[Ektoraskan]

Yes. Finish "what"? The University. So it's the object → you need the accusative.

[bacio_]

"My son will be... // my son is going to be... " What's the difference between them?

[Modenius]

In this particular case, I think most people would understand it as being the same, meaning-wise, and many people probably use them interchangeably in everyday speech.

That being said, I might break it down like:

Will be: statement of fact or certainty, or expressing

Going to be: maybe implies a prior plan

[Vogelvrij]

Why is it 'an engineer'? There is no bir in the Turkish sentence either?

[Modenius]

I think in a lot of uses of "[noun] olmak," it comes off as " be/become a/an [noun]" in translation.

Ex. baba olmak = "to become a father"

Ex. doctor olmak istiyorum = "I want to be a doctor"

'Bir' definitely can be used to express the indefinite, but I feel like it's omitted a lot too, without drastically changing the meaning.

[Sybille.Holz]

What about following word order:
When he finishes the university, my son will be an engineer?
Why is the same statement marked as wrong?

[Eva242549]

You need to omit "the".