Seher olunca kuş sesleri bahçeyi renklendiriyor.

At dawn, the sounds of birds color the garden.

Breakdown of Seher olunca kuş sesleri bahçeyi renklendiriyor.

• bahçe: the garden
• renklendirmek: to color
• olunca: when
• ses: the sound
• kuş: the bird
• seher: the dawn

Questions & Answers about Seher olunca kuş sesleri bahçeyi renklendiriyor.

What does Seher olunca mean and how does the suffix -unca function?

• Seher means “dawn.”
• The suffix -unca attaches to a verb (here ol-, “to become/arrive”) to form a temporal conjunction meaning “when.”
• So seher olunca literally means “when dawn comes” or “once it becomes dawn.”

Why not use olduğunda or olursa instead of olunca?

• olunca and olduğunda both mean “when,” but -unca is a bound conjunctional suffix (faster, more idiomatic) while olduğunda is a full participle + case ending (“when it has become”).
• olursa means “if it becomes,” so that’s conditional, not purely temporal.
• In everyday Turkish, olunca is the most natural for “when X happens.”

Can you break down renklendiriyor into its parts?

Certainly:

1. renk – “color” (noun root)
2. -li – adjective suffix “having/with” → renk­li “colorful”
3. -dir – causative suffix “to make/cause to be” → renklendir- “to make colorful”
4. -iyor – present continuous suffix “is/are …ing” → renklendiriyor “is making (something) colorful,” i.e. “is coloring”

Why is bahçeyi in the accusative case with -yi?

• Renklendirmek (“to color, to make colorful”) is a transitive verb that takes a direct object.
• Turkish marks definite direct objects with the accusative suffix -i/-ı/-u/-ü, here producing bahçe + yi = bahçeyi (“the garden”).
• Omitting -yi would make it indefinite (“a garden”) or unmarked, but because we mean “the garden,” we use bahçeyi.

Why doesn’t kuş sesleri have any case ending?

• In Turkish, subjects (nominative) are unmarked.
• kuş sesleri (“bird sounds”) is the subject of renklendiriyor, so it stays in the bare form with only the plural suffix -leri.

Why is the verb renklendiriyor placed at the end of the sentence?

Turkish is an SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) language:

• Subordinate clause first (Seher olunca),
• Then subject (kuş sesleri),
• Then object (bahçeyi),
• And finally the verb (renklendiriyor).
  Putting the verb last is the normal word order in Turkish main clauses.

Why not use bahçede (“in the garden”) instead of bahçeyi?

• bahçede would be locative (“in the garden”) and would describe where something happens.
• Here the garden is what gets “colored,” so it’s the direct object, not a location.
• That direct-object role demands the accusative bahçeyi.

Why is seher used here instead of sabah or şafak?

• şafak strictly means “the first light of dawn,” often poetic.
• seher is also literary/poetic for “dawn.”
• sabah is the everyday word for “morning.”
• All three refer to early day, but seher gives a more atmospheric, slightly elevated tone.