"Çay şekerli mi yoksa şekersiz mi?"

Translation: Is the tea with sugar or without sugar?

[sinisuom]

Why it's not right to translate: is the tea with sugar or without sugar?

[Ecogirl236]

It's correct, it's just a longer way of saying the question

[GordonRobb]

Falling foul of the tts here again I think. In saying sekerli, should one hear the 'r'. this sounds like sekeli. You can here it in sekersiz. I just want to know how to pronunce it right.

[Ektoraskan]

TTS is doing it right.

You might not hear it clearly, but there is another trick going on. The quality of "e" in the "şe-KER-li" is different, which shows us that the speaker actually intended a R there. Because in Turkish, if "e" is followed by R, L, M, N in the same syllable, it's pronounced more open, and has the quality of "a" in the English words "man, can, jam" etc. If we show this open sound as "æ",

TTS is clearly saying: şe-kæ(r)-li / şe-kæ(r)-siz

So whether or not the "r" is pronounced is not much of a deal here. (But of course, it should be pronounced). The quality of the "e" is more important.

[GordonRobb]

Superb. Best explanation I've had about how to pronounce e in turkish. So, just to check ben/sen etc should be pronounced bæn/sæn. However, isn't ederim pronounced with e the same both times? Or should it be edærim?

[Ektoraskan]

Yes "ederim" is a normal "e", because the syllables are: e-de-rim

So the "e" and "r" are not in the same syllable. Compare it with "şe-ker-li".

The conjugation of "etmek" is:

ederim

edærsin

edær

ederiz

edærsiniz

edærlær

[GordonRobb]

Ah, I had it as e-der-im. Any reliable way to know this stuff? Why did I decide to try to learn Turkish :)

[Ektoraskan]

Errrr… well… I've never thought about it ;p But give a native any word and they can parse the syllables correctly. So that means there must be a pattern. I think the trick is, inside a word, syllables always start with a consonant. And also, avoid consonant clusters. Let's take an absurdly long word:

Evdekilerdenmişsinizcesine (which means: as if you were one of those that are in the house), but the meaning is not important.

The first letter is "e". So is this a syllable? What's next? VDE. Which one is easier: EV-DE or E-VDE? I'd say, let's avoid consonant clusters: EV-DE is our first two syllables. The next letter is "K". So was the second syllable ev-DE or ev-DEK? What's the letter after the K? a vowel. So that's a new syllable. And I said above that inside a word, syllables start with a vowel, so: the "k" is in the new syllable: ev-de-Kİ. The next letter is L and the one after it is an E. So that's a new syllable: ev-de-ki-LE. The next letter is an R, and the one after that is a D, followed by another E = new syllable. So is it: RDE? Nah, let's avoid clusters: R belonged to the previous syllable: ev-de-ki-LER… etc.

If you do the math for the entire word, you'll get:

ev-de-ki-ler-den-miş-si-niz-ce-si-ne.

[GordonRobb]

Thanks. That is very very helpful. Regarding the pronunciation of e. I can honestly say, I searched every where for info about this, and everywhere I looked just said it is pronounced as in RED. Your explanation helps a lot. Any other words of wisdom on any other letters that change dependent on situations?

[GordonRobb]

And thanks for that conjucation, I missed that when I was first replying.

[GordonRobb]

Do you know of any other examples of letters changing how they are pronounced based on the letters the come before or after? This is gold :)

[Ilkei]

I just listened, it sounds right, I can hear "r" in "şekerli". It can be due to "l" after that, it is a soft sound unlike "s" in "şekersiz".

[padm915118]

I keep writing it as Çayı, because of tbe word, the tea in the translated sentences, and I keep getting it wrong