"Ben meyveyi ve yumurtayı yerim."
Translation:I eat the fruit and the egg.
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Just as correctly, you could omit the pronoun (meyveyi ve yumurtayı yerim) as the verbal conjugation (-im) makes it clear. I wonder if Turkish has a preference for pronoun dropping like Japanese or if they're generally included (or if it's a 50-50). Would appreciate if anyone could clarify, especially if this is a difference between spoken/informal and written/formal Türkçe.
Turkish loves to drop pronouns -- any time they are not necessary for clarity, they will be dropped.
But the sentence is equally correct with or without the pronouns.
Meyvey- i vs. Yumurtay-ı !! When will I use the ending -i and in which case -ı ??
The rules are a bit complex for a comment... But it's called "vowel harmony" and (putting it in plain terms) related to oral postures making some sounds natural (like how in English, voiced and unvoiced sounds don't usually occur with each other - think the "s" sound in carts vs. cards)
I have learned that one fruit is meyva and fruits are meyve. Why is my translation (I eat the fruits and the egg) wrong?
Fruit (singular) --> meyve
Fruit (plural, sometimes "fruits," but only in certain context) --> meyveler
In English, each of these nouns could be either a singular count noun or a mass noun. What are the possibilities in Turkish?
Turkish doesn't really have those concepts :) There are no (un)countable nouns or mass nouns. You can say "sular" even in some contexts :)
Thanks, that's very sensible. I take it that ‘sular’ is the plural of ‘su’? (Even in English, you can say ‘waters’ as a noun in some contexts, such referring to glasses of water or bodies of water, but then we think of the singular as having a slightly different sense from the usual one.)
could be either a singular count noun or a mass noun
That is not quite right, and these are two very complex nouns to use when figuring this out.
- Fruit is a countable noun (unless talking about it as a food), but the plural is also "fruit."
- You will only say "fruits" in very specific circumstances.
- As a food, it is often an uncountable/mass noun.
- [It is quite like "fish" in most of these aspects. As a native speaker, I give you my ongoing apology for English.]
- Egg is a countable noun (unless talking about it as a liquid substance), and the plural is "eggs."
- As a liquid, it can be an uncountable/mass noun.
Whenever a phrase only has one subject the pronoun can be omitted but when there are 2 subjects in a sentence the pronoun cannot ex: ''I eat food, he does not eat food'' would that be "Ben yemek yerim, o yemek yer değil" or "Ben yemek yerim, yemek yer değil" or "yemek yerim, o yemek yer değil" I hope this makes sense. Thank you!
The first, you must state both subjects.
Also, your grammar was wrong. It should read, "Ben yemek yerim, o yeme yemez" :)
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I am confused about the use of plurals. It has been discussed elsewhere that nouns can be singular or plura (without the ler/lar ending). Ben kitap okurim can be I read a book, or I read books. Why then can yumurtayi in this sentence not be the eggs?
That's only true when they are not specific/definite objects.
"the" makes things definite, that's why we might use accusative case for it depending on the verb, and there is accusative for both singular and plural objects.Read this.
what is the rule of putting yamurtayı (yı) instead of (yi) and sütü (ü) instead of suyu (yu)