Questions & Answers about Ben evde elektrikten tasarruf ediyorum.
Why is Ben included at the beginning, and is it necessary?
Ben is the pronoun for “I” in Turkish. However, Turkish verbs show the subject through their endings, so you can drop the pronoun without confusion. In ediyorum, the suffix -iyor (present progressive) plus -um (first person singular) already tells you the subject is “I.”
You can simply say:
Evde elektrikten tasarruf ediyorum.
What does evde mean, and why not just ev?
Evde is ev (house/home) with the locative case suffix -de, meaning “in/at home.” Turkish uses case endings to express spatial relations, so evde = “at home,” whereas ev alone is just the bare noun “home.”
Why is elektrikten in the ablative case (with -ten)?
The verb phrase tasarruf etmek (“to save, economize”) requires the thing you’re saving “from” to be in the ablative case. The ablative suffix -den/-dan (here -ten after the voiceless k) marks “from.” Thus elektrikten = “from electricity,” i.e. “on electricity.”
What does tasarruf ediyorum literally mean?
Tasarruf is the noun “saving/conservation,” and etmek means “to do.” Together as a compound, tasarruf etmek means “to save.” The ending -iyorum is the first person singular present progressive. So tasarruf ediyorum literally is “I am doing a saving,” which we translate as “I am saving.”