Learn Hardcore Turkish: Aile gelenekleri yüzyıllardır yaşanıyordu, çünkü atalarımızın mirası nesilden nesile aktarılmıştı. - Family traditions had been lived for centuries because our ancestors’ heritage had been passed down from generation to generation.

yüzyıllar means centuries, and attaching the suffix -dır turns it into a durative expression: “for centuries.” In Turkish, -dır (or its variants like -dir, -dur, -dür) on a noun often indicates an ongoing duration, similar to “boyunca” (throughout).

Why is yaşanıyordu in the passive voice and which tense is it?

yaşanıyordu breaks down as:

yaşa- (root “to live/experience”)
-n- (passive marker)
-ıyor- (progressive aspect)
-du (past tense)

Together, it means “was being experienced” or “had long been experienced.” The passive is used because the focus is on traditions being experienced, not on who experiences them.

Why is gelenekleri in the accusative case even though it seems like the subject?

Originally in an active sentence you’d say “insanlar aile geleneklerini yaşıyordu”: gelenekleri is the direct object, so it’s marked with -i (accusative). When you switch to passive (yaşanıyordu), that object becomes the grammatical subject—but Turkish allows it to keep the -i to signal definiteness (specific traditions). If it were indefinite, you’d see gelenekler instead.

How do the suffixes work in atalarımızın mirası?

atalarımız = “our ancestors”
-ın (genitive) turns it into atalarımızın = “of our ancestors”
mirası = “their legacy,” where -ı is the 3rd person singular possessive

So atalarımızın mirası literally means “the legacy of our ancestors.”

What does nesilden nesile mean and why are ablative -den and dative -e used?

nesilden nesile is the idiomatic way to say “from generation to generation.”

nesil-den = “from generation” (ablative)
nesil-e = “to generation” (dative)

This paired structure emphasizes the passage through successive generations.

What is the tense and nuance of aktarılmıştı, and what does -mış imply here?

aktarılmıştı is the passive plus perfect-past:

aktar- (to transfer)
-ıl- (passive marker)
-mış (perfect/evidential)
-tı (past)

It means “had been transferred.” The -mış can indicate a completed action before another past event or that the information is inferred or reported.

Why are the verbs placed at the end of each clause?

Turkish is a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) language, so the main verb typically appears last. In our sentence:
…yaşanıyordu, çünkü … aktarılmıştı.
Even with conjunctions like çünkü, verbs stay at the end of their clause.

How does çünkü function in this sentence?

çünkü means “because” and introduces a reason clause. It usually appears at the beginning of the subordinate clause it governs, just as in English:
Aile gelenekleri yüzyıllardır yaşanıyordu, çünkü atalarımızın mirası nesilden nesile aktarılmıştı.