Learn Hardcore Turkish: Araştırma sırasında gayriresmi sohbetlerde mülakat sorularını etiketleyip kısa notlar tuttuk. - During research, we tagged the interview questions in informal chats and jotted down short notes.

Sırasında comes from the noun sıra (“turn/sequence”) plus the locative-time suffix -(s)ında/-(s)inde, which here means “during” or “in the course of.” So Araştırma sırasında literally means “during the research.”

Why isn’t gayriresmi inflected for case or number before sohbetlerde?

In Turkish, adjectives never take case, number, or possessive endings. They stay in their base form and simply modify the noun. Thus gayriresmi (“informal”) remains unchanged, while the noun sohbet (“conversation”) is pluralized and put into the locative case as sohbetlerde (“in conversations”).

Why is sohbetlerde plural and in the locative case?

Sohbet (“conversation”) becomes plural with -ler → sohbetler, and the locative suffix -de (with voicing as -de → -de) indicates “in/at.” Combined, sohbetlerde means “in conversations.” Here it tells us where the tagging and note-taking happened.

What does the suffix -ip in etiketleyip signify?

The suffix -ip is a converb (also called a verbal gerund or “and-then” connector). It links two actions performed by the same subject in sequence. So etiketleyip kısa notlar tuttuk means “we tagged them and then took brief notes.”

Why is mülakat sorularını marked with the accusative suffix -ı?

In Turkish, a definite direct object takes the accusative ending. Mülakat soruları (“interview questions”) is a definite, specific set of questions, so it receives -nı → sorularını (the vowel harmonization -ları → -larını → sorularını). This marks “the interview questions” as the direct object of etiketleyip.

What does kısa notlar tuttuk literally mean?

Literally kısa is “short,” notlar is the plural of the English loan not (“note”), and tuttuk is the past-tense, first-person-plural of tutmak (“to hold”). However, not tutmak is an idiom meaning “to take notes.” So kısa notlar tuttuk means “we took brief notes.”

Why is the subject pronoun omitted in this Turkish sentence?

Turkish verbs carry person and number information via suffixes. Tuttuk ends in -uk, indicating “we” in the past tense. Therefore the pronoun biz (“we”) is redundant and typically dropped.

Could the order of the verbs be reversed, e.g. kısa notlar tutup etiketledik?

You could, but it would shift the emphasis or suggest you took notes first and then labelled them; also the object mülakat sorularını would need repositioning. The original mülakat sorularını etiketleyip kısa notlar tuttuk stresses that you tagged the questions and then took notes about them. Turkish allows flexible word order, but this sequence makes the intended flow clear.