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Questions & Answers about Sinagog çok eski.
Why isn’t sinagog capitalized in Turkish?
In Turkish, only proper names (like Ankara or Fatih Sultan Mehmet) and the first word of a sentence are capitalized. sinagog here is a common noun meaning “synagogue,” not a specific building’s name, so it stays lowercase.
Why is there no verb equivalent to “is” in Sinagog çok eski?
Turkish drops the copula “to be” (is/am/are) in the present tense for simple nominal sentences. Instead of saying sinagog çok eski’dir, most speakers simply say sinagog çok eski. The meaning “The synagogue is very old” is understood without an explicit verb.
Why aren’t there any articles like “a” or “the” before sinagog?
Turkish does not have definite or indefinite articles. Whether a noun is definite or indefinite is inferred from context or, if you need to emphasize indefiniteness, you can add bir (“a”), as in bir sinagog (“a synagogue”). Without bir, it’s usually understood as “the” or a specific one already in mind.
Why does sinagog have no case ending here?
In a simple nominal sentence like this, sinagog is the subject in the nominative case and takes no suffix. Only when showing things like possession (genitive), direction (dative), or location (locative) would you add case endings (e.g., sinagogda “in the synagogue,” sinagogu is incorrect in nominative).
What does çok mean and why is it placed before eski?
çok means “very” (or “much”). It is an adverb modifying the adjective eski. In Turkish, adverbs like çok come immediately before the adjective or verb they modify, so çok eski = “very old.”
Adjectives usually come before nouns in Turkish. Why is eski after sinagog here?
When an adjective directly modifies a noun, it precedes it (e.g., eski sinagog = “old synagogue”). But in Sinagog çok eski, eski is part of the predicate describing the subject sinagog. In predicates, Turkish order is Subject + (Adverb) + Adjective, so the adjective follows the noun it describes.
Does Sinagog çok eski imply plural or singular? How would you say “The synagogues are very old”?
Sinagog is singular here. To make it plural, add -lar/ler: sinagoglar. So “The synagogues are very old” becomes Sinagoglar çok eski.