Yaz sıcağında limonata içmek ferahlatıcıdır.

Yaz sıcağında limonata içmek ferahlatıcıdır.
Drinking lemonade in the summer heat is refreshing.
Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching Turkish grammar and vocabulary.

Start learning Turkish now

Questions & Answers about Yaz sıcağında limonata içmek ferahlatıcıdır.

What is the morphological breakdown of sıcağında, and why does sıcak change to sıçağ?

The form sıcağında comes from sıcak (“heat”) plus two key suffixes, with a consonant mutation in between:

  • k → ğ: In Turkish, when a word ending in k takes a vowel-initial suffix, k often softens to ğ (consonant lenition).
  • -ı: Third-person singular possessive, making sıcağı (“its heat,” i.e. “the heat of …”).
  • -nda: Locative case (“in”), where n is a buffer (because the previous suffix ends in a vowel) + da.

Put together: sıcağ-ı-n-da = “in the heat.”

What grammatical role does limonata içmek play, and why is the verb içmek in the infinitive form?
  • limonata içmek (“drinking lemonade”) is an infinitive noun phrase functioning as the subject of the sentence.
  • In Turkish, the -mek infinitive can act like a noun (similar to English gerunds), so for general statements you use içmek rather than a person-and-tense form like içiyorum.
What word order does Turkish follow, and why is ferahlatıcıdır at the end of the sentence?

Turkish is usually Subject–Object–Verb (or predicate) final. Here the structure is:

  1. Circumstance (locative/time): Yaz sıcağında
  2. Subject (infinitive noun): limonata içmek
  3. Predicate (adjective + copula): ferahlatıcıdır

Hence ferahlatıcıdır (“is refreshing”) comes last as the predicate.

How is ferahlatıcı formed from ferahlatmak, and what does it mean?
  • ferahlatmak is the verb “to refresh” (built on ferah, meaning “fresh/airy”).
  • Adding -ıcı turns a verb into an adjective meaning “causing X” or “having the quality of X.”
    ferahlat- + ‑ıcı = ferahlatıcı, “refreshing.”
What is the function of the suffix -dır in ferahlatıcıdır, and why exactly -dır?
  • -dır is the third-person singular copula, equivalent to English is, used especially in writing or formal speech to state facts.
  • It has four forms (-dır, -dir, -dur, -dür) determined by vowel harmony. Since ferahlatıcı ends in the vowel ı (a back, unrounded vowel), we use -dır.
Can the copula -dır be omitted in ferahlatıcıdır, and what would that sound like?

Yes. In everyday colloquial Turkish the copula is often dropped after adjectives or nouns. You can simply say:
limonata içmek ferahlatıcı
and it still means “drinking lemonade is refreshing,” just in a more casual style.

Could we also say yazın sıcağında instead of yaz sıcağında, and is there any difference?
Absolutely. yazın is the genitive form of yaz (“summer”), so yazın sıcağında literally means “in summer’s heat.” In Turkish, when the second noun already takes a possessive suffix (-ı on sıcak), the genitive on yaz is optional. Both yaz sıcağında and yazın sıcağında mean the same thing; the shorter form is just very common in speech and writing.