Breakdown of Sanki yağmur duracakmış gibi gökyüzü açılıyor.
gökyüzü
the sky
durmak
to stop
yağmur
the rain
gibi
as if
Questions & Answers about Sanki yağmur duracakmış gibi gökyüzü açılıyor.
What does the word sanki do here?
Sanki means “as if / as though.” It signals that what follows is an impression or a hypothetical comparison rather than a factual statement. In speech it can sound tentative or hedging, like “kind of seems like.”
Why are both sanki and gibi used? Isn’t that redundant?
Using both is very common and natural. Sanki sets up the “as if” frame at the start, and gibi attaches to the clause it modifies to complete the comparison:
- Sanki [yağmur duracakmış] gibi … = “As if [the rain were going to stop] …” You can drop sanki and say Yağmur duracakmış gibi gökyüzü açılıyor, which is also fine. Keeping both adds emphasis and is idiomatic in everyday Turkish.
What exactly does gibi attach to in this sentence?
Gibi is a postposition that attaches to the phrase immediately before it. Here it attaches to the entire clause yağmur duracakmış, forming the adverbial phrase yağmur duracakmış gibi (“as if the rain were going to stop”), which modifies gökyüzü açılıyor.
How should I parse duracakmış morphologically?
- dur- = verb root “to stop”
- -acak = future tense marker
- -mış = evidential/indirect (“apparently/it seems/it’s said that”) Together, dur-acak-mış means “it apparently will stop” or “it seems it will stop.”