"Seni sevmekten nefret ediyorum."
Translation:I hate loving you.
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I believe this hasn't been covered yet but the suffix -ten after a verb stem makes it like a noun?
No, it's more complicated than that.
-ten is the harmonized form of "-den", the ablative case.
Until the first half of this century, the infinitives were declinable. So, if we take the verb "sevmek", you could say:
*Sevmeği (accusative) → lit: the to love = the loving (object)
*Sevmeğe (dative) → lit: towards to love = to (the) loving
Sevmekte (locative) → lit: in/at to love = in/at loving
Sevmekten (ablative) → lit: from to love = from loving
As you see, the infinitives were totally compatible in Turkish, which doesn't work in English, where you have to use the -ing forms instead.
However, infinitives are no longer declined in the accusative and the dative cases. We use the noun form of the verb by omitting the "-k", thus getting Sevmek → Sevme, and then decline it: sevmeyi / sevmeye.
In locative and ablative, we get different shades of meaning when we use the noun or the infinitive form:
Both "Sevmede" and "Sevmekte" can be used in a sentence like: "I'm good at loving people" (İnsanları sevmede/sevmekte iyiyim). However, "sevmekte" is also the newspaper/journalist jargon for the present continuous: Sevmekteyim (I'm [in the process of] loving) which has the same meaning as "Seviyorum (I love)". "Sevmede" can't be used in this meaning.
In ablative, too, there is a difference: The noun form "Sevmeden" rather equates to "without loving", while the full infinitive "Sevmekten" means "from loving".
I know this wasn't what you had asked at all, but I thought I should shed light on a wider area. :-]
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Great answer, Ektoraskan. I especially appreciate the inclusion of historical information. I did find it interesting, however, for another reason. You mention in this reply that infinitives are no longer declined in the accusative and the dative cases, but I just recently read the answer you provided here:
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/9141719
My guess is that a sentence where the infinitive has been declined with accusative or dative case might be indicative of the age of the person who wrote it or the age of the document in which it is found, but it is no longer commonly used.
In your reply at the link above, were you just providing a wide range of the many ways a student might see "[Emel] wants to drink coffee now"? After all, students/scholars (more than most others) would have occasion/reason to read a document written prior to 1950, so, for a lot of different reasons it is actually very helpful to know how the Turkish language has developed over the years.
Hello Lisa, in that link, I did not decline the infinitive form. Because it is not used anymore. Had I done that, it would look like: "içmeği". (içmek → içmek + i → içmeği). What I did was transform the infinitive into a noun, which is a pretty easy thing to do: Just omit the final "k". İçmek (to drink) → İçme (drinking / the act of drinking). From then on, it's a fully declinable word, just like any other noun: içme → içme +i → içmeyi.
It's true that people might at one point read a paper written prior to 1950, but I'm guessing it won't be too hard for them to figure out what's going on when they see infinitives declined in accusative. :)
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I see it now. Thank you for the clear explanation. It all makes sense now.
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Isn't this more or less just a change in spelling? Between front vowels, "ğ" is pronounced (basically) the same as "y", isn't it, so "içmeği"/"içmeyi" and "içmeğe"/"içmeye" are essentially homophonous pairs, right?
Only when the vowel is e. It' doesn't work for back vowels. "Yapmağa" and "yapmaya" are not homophonous. So, it's not a spelling convention, but a change in grammatical usage.
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Ah, of course ... I forgot that back vowels exist ... in my defence, I was tired.
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Thank you for the full explanation. Yeah, this is beyond the "easy" part of Turkish I'm getting used to haha.
Long story short "-ten" doesn't make the verb a noun. What happens is, infinitives can be declined in various cases just like nouns. Technically speaking "Sevmek" is still an infinitive.
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sevmek is already a noun. it corresponds to both gerunds and infinitives in english. you can also use sevme in different situations as ektoraskan explained.
the ending -den is completely related to the verb nefret etmek (hate). we simply use this verb with ablative case. this is something you have to learn when learning words and most dictionaries give you this information. but still there are not so many of them, therefore there's no reason to worry at all. one more example would be -den hoşlanmak (to like)
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As deorme90 explains, the important thing to learn from this sentence is that some verbs (like nefret etmek) simply require a particular case (like the ablative). The connection between them may be completely opaque to an English speaker, but it is grammatically necessary. So in a very simple case, "I hate you" is "Senden nefret ediyorum." The suffix -TEn will be found on all words that are acting like the "object" of this verb, whether they are a pronoun (senden), verb (sevmekten), etc.
humbly corrects himself
Look at Ektoraskan's comment below :)
No, that doesn't work. We could say: Seni seviyorum ve bundan nefret ediyorum.
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So saying "Seni sevmeyimden nefret ediyorum" or something along those lines doesn't exist? Pardon, I never got to see AlexinNotTurkey's original comment.
And if you change it to the past tense, is this not correct? ''Seni sevdiğimden nefret ettim.''
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Or does simply context imply 'I hate that I love you' for the first sentence?
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"your love" would require possessive: "Senin aşkından nefret ediyorum"
