niçin

In short

How to pronounce it

ç like "ch" in "church". Like most question words, stressed on the first syllable: NI-chin

Why it looks that way

Assembled from ne ("what") and için ("for") — "for what". The line with neden is thin: neden looks at the cause behind, niçin at the goal ahead.

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

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  Bunu niçin aldın?

  What did you buy this for?

Nearby words: basic words

Yes, no, good, bad, very. The small change of a language — and no sentence assembles without it.

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  evet

  yes

  Plain agreement, no fine print. Mind the gesture that can replace it: head tipped back with a quick tongue click means "no", even though from afar it looks like a nod.
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  hayır

  no

  Turks often accompany a refusal with a tongue click and a small upward nod — that little package is a "no" too.
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  iyiyim

  I am fine

  "iyi" ("good") plus "-yim" ("I"): literally "I am good". The verb "to be" is just an ending here.
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  iyi

  good

  One word serves as adjective and adverb alike: iyi bir kitap is "a good book", iyi uyudum is "I slept well". English needs two words where Turkish makes do with one.
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  kötü

  bad

  ö — pucker your lips as for "oo" and say "e" as in "bed": kö-tü
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  çok iyi

  very well

  "çok" means "very" and always stands right before the word it boosts, just like English "very".
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  ve

  and

  An Arabic conjunction, often replaced in live speech by the tail -le/-la: annemle babam is "mom and dad". In a list ve appears only before the last item.
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  ama

  but

  The most common "but". The bookish one is fakat; the conversational booster is ama yani. It opens the second clause, as in English.
• ▶
  yarım

  half

  dotless ı: ya-RUHM
• ▶
  Bana gerek yok

  I do not need it

  Literally "I have no need" — with yok. The polite refusal for a pushy seller.

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “basic words”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• Basic words314 words on the topic
• hangi — whichpronoun
• kimin — whosepronoun
• hiç kimse — no onepronoun
• bir şey — somethingpronoun
• All Turkish wordsIndex by topic
• Why a word list doesn't sticka note