Akşam yemeğinde ızgara tavuk pişirdim.

to cook

Breakdown of Akşam yemeğinde ızgara tavuk pişirdim.

• akşam: the evening
• -de: in
• yemek: the dinner

Questions & Answers about Akşam yemeğinde ızgara tavuk pişirdim.

Why does yemeğinde have both -i and -nde suffixes?

They are two separate suffixes on yemek (“meal”):

• -i is the 3rd-person singular possessive, turning yemek into yemeği (“its meal”), which in Turkish idiom means “dinner” when paired with akşam.
• -nde is the locative case (-de “in/at”) with a buffer n (needed because yemeği ends in a vowel), giving yemeğinde “at dinner.”

What is the rule for choosing -de vs -da, and why is there an n before it?

Turkish locative suffixes obey vowel harmony:

• After front vowels (e, i, ö, ü) you use -de; after back vowels (a, ı, o, u) you use -da.
• If the word ends in a vowel, you insert a buffer consonant n to avoid two vowels in a row.
  So yemeği (has front vowels “e, i”) + buffer n
  • locative de → yemeğinde.

Why doesn’t tavuk take an accusative suffix (like -u or -ı)?

In Turkish, only definite (specific) direct objects take the accusative suffix. Here ızgara tavuk (“grilled chicken”) is indefinite—“some grilled chicken”—so no accusative marker is needed.