How a whole sentence becomes an object: -mek, -me and -dık

How it works

Unit 54 is all about someone understanding, finding out or proving something — which means a second sentence must be placed inside the first. English places it with the conjunction 'that'. Turkish sets no conjunction: it turns the inner verb into a noun and glues on a case.

-mek / -mak — the action in general, with no person. okumak güzel — reading is good. This is the dictionary form, and it also works as an object: yüzmeyi severim — I love swimming (already -me, because a case is needed).

-me / -ma — the action with a case and a possessive. gelmeni bekliyorum — I am waiting for you to come, 'your coming I await'. The tail takes the person (gelme-n — your coming) and the case (-i — the accusative).

-dık / -dik / -duk / -dük — 'what someone did'. The form unit 54 needs most: anladığım — what I understood, duyduğum — what I heard, söylediği — what he said. A case or a postposition clings to it, and a whole turn comes out: anladığım kadarıyla (as far as I understood), duyduğuma göre (from what I heard), yanlış anlaşıldığı ortaya çıktı (it came out that he had been misunderstood).

Why -dık and not -mek. -mek knows neither who acts nor when. -dık knows both: the person and a past-or-present time sit inside it. The future has its own tail — -ecek: geleceğini biliyorum — I know that he will come.

How to read it. Meeting a long word with -dığı in the middle, look for an English 'that' or 'which': okuduğum kitap — the book I read; okuduğumu biliyor — he knows that I read it. One form serving two English conjunctions — and both halves of units 54 and 58 stand on it.

Table

By example

• ▶
  Sonradan yanlış anlaşıldığı ortaya çıktı

  It later came out that he had been misunderstood
• ▶
  Konuyu ancak şimdi kavradım

  I only grasped the topic just now
• ▶
  Sonunda şu kanıya vardım

  In the end I came to this conclusion

How the rule settles in your head

A rule is not memorized from an explanation. It is memorized from an attempt to use it and a mistake — that is why the app delivers it mixed in with words, not as a separate lesson: it resurfaces exactly where you forgot it.

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