Ne zaman sinemaya gideceğim?

When will I go to the cinema?

Breakdown of Ne zaman sinemaya gideceğim?

• gitmek: to go
• sinema: the cinema
• -ya: to
• ne zaman: when

Questions & Answers about Ne zaman sinemaya gideceğim?

What does Ne zaman mean and why is it placed at the beginning of the sentence?

Ne means “what” and zaman means “time,” so together Ne zaman literally means “what time?” but is used to ask “when?”
In Turkish, question words like who, what, when, where typically come first in a sentence.

Why is it sinemaya instead of just sinema?

Turkish shows direction (to, into) by adding a dative-case suffix to the noun. Here:
• sinema (cinema) ends in a vowel, so you insert a buffer y + the vowel a (by vowel harmony).
• sinema + y + a = sinemaya, meaning “to the cinema.”

How is the future tense formed in gideceğim?

You take the verb root gid- (go), add the future marker -ecek (adjusted to -ecek vs -acak by vowel harmony), and then the first-person singular ending -im. These fuse into one suffix: -eceğim.
So: gid- + ­eceğim = gideceğim (“I will go”).

Why isn’t there a question particle -mi in Ne zaman sinemaya gideceğim?

The particle -mi is used for yes/no questions. When you use a question word like ne zaman (“when”), you don’t need -mi—the question word itself signals that it’s a question.

Why is ben (“I”) omitted in this sentence?

In Turkish, verb endings indicate person and number. The ending -eceğim already tells you the subject is “I,” so the pronoun ben is unnecessary and usually dropped.

Can the word order change? For example, Sinemaya ne zaman gideceğim?

Yes! Turkish has relatively flexible word order. Both:
• Ne zaman sinemaya gideceğim?
• Sinemaya ne zaman gideceğim?
mean “When will I go to the cinema?” However, starting with the question word is slightly more typical.