Can salı pruvanın yakınında.

The life raft is near the bow.

Breakdown of Can salı pruvanın yakınında.

• yakınında: near
• can salı: a life raft
• pruva: the bow of a ship

Questions & Answers about Can salı pruvanın yakınında.

Why is Can written like that? Is it the English word can?

No. Can here is a Turkish male name, not the English modal verb.

It is usually pronounced roughly like Jan in English, with a j sound: /dʒan/.

So in this sentence, Can is the person being talked about.

Where is the verb? Why doesn’t the sentence have a word for is?

Turkish often omits the present-tense form of to be in simple sentences.

So:

• Can salı pruvanın yakınında.
  means
• Can is near the bow on Tuesday.

This is very normal in Turkish. In the present tense, a sentence like this can be complete without an explicit verb.

You may sometimes see -dır / -dir / -dur / -dür added for a more formal, emphatic, or explanatory tone, but it is not required here.

What does salı mean here, and why doesn’t it have a suffix?

salı means Tuesday.

In Turkish, expressions of time often appear without a case ending when they function like adverbs:

• salı = on Tuesday
• yarın = tomorrow
• bugün = today

So salı by itself can naturally mean on Tuesday.

You could also say salı günü, which is a slightly fuller way to say on Tuesday.