The book I read

19.1 Clauses before the noun

English describes a noun in two places. A single word goes before it: "the new book". A whole clause goes after it, joined with who, which or that: "the book that I read", "the man who lives here".

Turkish has only the first place. Everything that describes a noun stands before it, a whole clause as much as a single word. There is no word for who, which or that to begin the clause. Instead its verb takes an ending that lets it stand before a noun, as an adjective does. A verb in that form is a participle, and the glosses write PTCP.

okuduğum stands where yeni stood. Its verb has no tense and no person ending; who does the reading is said with a possessive ending, -(I)m, "my", the ending of evim, "my house". Piece by piece it is "my reading" book.

Which ending the verb takes depends on what the noun is to the verb. If the noun is the one doing the action, as the man is in "the man who lives here", the verb takes -(y)An. If the noun is anything else, as the book is in "the book I read", the verb takes -DIK and a possessive ending. For what is still to come, -(y)AcAK does both jobs.

19.2 -en: the one who does

When the noun is the one doing the action, the verb takes -(y)An: -en or -an by harmony, and -yen or -yan after a vowel.

To make one, start from a sentence. Kız kitap okuyor is "the girl is reading a book". The verb loses its endings and takes -(y)An, and the noun it was about moves to the end: kitap okuyan kız, "the girl reading a book". Everything else that belonged to the verb, its object, its place, its time, stays before it, in the order it had in the sentence.

bir, "a", goes right before the noun, after the whole clause: Ankara'da oturan bir arkadaş, "a friend who lives in Ankara"; Türkçe bilen bir doktor, "a doctor who speaks Turkish".

-(y)An says nothing about time. gelen adam is the man who is coming, who comes, or who came, and the rest of the sentence tells which. For "not", -mA goes before it: gelmeyen, "who doesn't come", "who didn't come".

A participle can also stand alone, as "the one who" or "someone who", with no noun after it. Then it takes the noun's endings itself: gelenler, "the ones who came". With var and yok it asks and says whether there is anyone who does something: İngilizce bilen var mı? is, word for word, "is there one who knows English?"

var has no participle of its own. Where a clause needs one, Turkish uses olan, from olmak, "to be": arabası var, "he has a car", becomes arabası olan, "who has a car".

19.3 -ki: the book on the table

When all a clause would say is where something is, Turkish needs no verb. -ki after -DA turns the place into a word that stands before a noun: masada, "on the table", becomes masadaki, and masadaki kitap is "the book on the table". The glosses write REL, for relative, since it does the work of a relative clause.

-ki keeps its vowel after -DA, whatever comes before. It goes on some words of time too, as akşamki film, "this evening's film", and there it has one exception: after dün, "yesterday", and bugün, "today", it is -kü: dünkü gazete, "yesterday's paper".

19.4 -dik: what someone did or does

When the noun is anything but the one doing the action, the verb takes -DIK, and after it a possessive ending for who does it. -DIK has eight forms: -dik, -dık, -duk and -dük, and after a hard consonant -tik, -tık, -tuk and -tük. Before the possessive's vowel its k softens to ğ, as a k between vowels does: okuduk and -um make okuduğum.

The endings are the possessive endings of evim, evin, evi, and they say whose the action is. In okudukları the k stays, since no vowel follows it. okuduğu, glossed its, is "his", "her" or "its": Turkish doesn't say which, and the sentence around it usually does.

git keeps its t here, since the ending after it begins with a consonant.

When the doer is a noun, it takes the genitive, -(n)In, and the participle takes -(s)I, "its": Ali'nin okuduğu kitap, "the book Ali read", built just as Ali'nin evi, "Ali's house", is. benim and senin can go before the participle in the same way, for weight: benim okuduğum kitap, "the book I read", not someone else.

In the last one the whole phrase, annemin yaptığı yemek, is the object of seviyorum, and the object's ending goes where a case ending always goes: on the noun at the end.

-DIK covers the present and the past. okuduğum kitap is the book I'm reading, or the book I read; the sentence around it says which. What is still to come takes -(y)AcAK, two sections on. For "not", -mA goes before -DIK: okumadığım, "that I haven't read".

19.5 The place where, the day when

The noun after a -DIK form need not be the object. It can be the place where something happens, the time when, the person it is done with. In a sentence such a noun would have an ending, -DA, -(y)A, -DAn or -(y)lA; before a participle the ending goes, and the meaning of the two words together fills it in. English does the same with "the city I live in", and has to keep the "in".

So where English chooses between which, where, when and to whom, Turkish has the one form, -DIK with a possessive, and lets the noun say the rest.

19.6 -ecek: what someone will do

The future's ending, -(y)AcAK, makes a participle too: -ecek or -acak, and -yecek or -yacak after a vowel, with its last k softening to ğ before a vowel. The glosses write FUT.PTCP. It works both ways. With a possessive ending it does what -DIK does, for the future: okuyacağım kitap, "the book I'm going to read".

okuyacağım is also "I will read", the plain future. The two are spelt the same and are told apart by what follows: a noun after it, and it is a participle.

Without a possessive ending it does what -(y)An does: the noun is the one who will act. Gelecek misafirler are "the guests who will come", and gelecek hafta, "the week that will come", is "next week".

And before an indefinite noun it says "something to do": okuyacak bir kitap, "a book to read", içecek bir şey, "something to drink". yiyecek and içecek on their own are nouns: "food" and "drinks".

The three forms side by side:

19.7 That, because, when

A -DIK or -(y)AcAK form with its possessive ending can also stand with no noun after it, as a noun itself: Ali'nin geldiği, "Ali's having come", "that Ali came". It takes case endings like any noun, and does the work of English's clauses with that, what and where after verbs like "know", "say" and "understand".

geldiğini is both "that you came" and "that he came": geldiğin, "your coming", and geldiği, "his coming", come out the same once the object's ending is on them. A named doer settles it: senin geldiğini, Ali'nin geldiğini.

The words that follow nouns follow these too. için, "for", after one is "because"; gibi, "like", is "as". And zaman, "time", after a -DIK form is "when": geldiğim zaman, "the time I come", is an ordinary participle and its noun. A noun or an adjective has no verb to take -DIK, so Turkish brings in olmak, "to be": hasta olduğum, "my being ill".

Hasta olduğum için says what çünkü hastaydım says, with the reason first, the order Turkish prefers.

19.8 Reading a long noun phrase from its end

Each clause stands before its noun, and a clause can hold a noun with a clause of its own. So a Turkish noun phrase grows to the left, while an English one grows to the right. Read a Turkish one from its end, and it often comes out in English's order.

Read the last line from the right: adam, "the man"; satan, "who sold"; arabayı, "the car"; aldığımız, "that we bought". English says the same four in the opposite order.

To take a long phrase apart:

1. Find the participles: the verbs ending in -(y)An, -DIK or -(y)AcAK, with or without a possessive.
2. The noun just after the last of them is the one the whole phrase is about. Begin there; if the phrase has a case ending, it is on that noun.
3. The participle before it is the verb of a clause about that noun. Read its endings: -(y)An for "who", a possessive for who did it.
4. Go on to the left. The words before the participle are its object, its place, its time. If one of them is a noun with a participle of its own before it, do the same again for that noun.
5. A noun with the genitive, -(n)In, near the start is a doer waiting for its verb. It belongs to the -DIK form with the matching possessive, however many words on.

The participles are geçen, okuduğu and yazan. The noun after the last of them is kadın, "the woman": the phrase is about her, and she is the one who yaşıyor, "lives", in Istanbul. Before her, yazan, "who wrote". Before that, its object, kitabı, "the book". Before the book, okuduğu, "that he read", and its -(s)I answers the genitive at the start: Ali'nin. Between them, geçen hafta, "last week", is itself a participle and its noun: geçen is from geçmek, "to pass", and the week is the one that has passed.

Here the noun is ev, "the house", and before it aldığı, "that he bought". Its doer, in the genitive, is arkadaşımın, "my friend's", and that noun has a clause of its own before it: Ankara'da oturan, "who lives in Ankara".

Written Turkish, the news above all, is full of phrases like these, often longer. Speech keeps them shorter.