Questions & Answers about Bu şarkı senin hoşuna gidecek.
What is going on with the idiom hoşuna gitmek?
It’s an idiomatic “experiencer” construction meaning “for something to be pleasing to someone,” i.e., “someone likes something.” The thing that is liked is the grammatical subject, and the person who likes it is expressed with a genitive + possessive + dative phrase. So in Bu şarkı senin hoşuna gidecek, the subject is bu şarkı (“this song”), and senin hoşuna means “to your liking.”
Why is it senin, not sen or sana?
Because the experiencer is marked as a possessor of “liking/pleasure” (hoş used nominally here). You need the genitive for the possessor: senin. Then the possessed noun-like element takes a possessive suffix and the dative case: senin hoş-un-a (“to your liking”). Using sana would be correct with a different idiom, e.g., Sana hoş gelecek (“It will feel pleasant to you”), but not with hoşuna gitmek.
Can you break down hoşuna morphologically?
- hoş = “pleasant/pleasing”
- -un (2nd person singular possessive “your”) → hoşun (“your liking” in this idiom)
- -a (dative “to”) → hoşuna (“to your liking”) Other persons:
- hoşuma (to my liking)
- hoşuna (to your liking / to his/her liking; 2sg and 3sg surface-identical)
- hoşumuza (to our liking)
- hoşunuza (to your [pl/formal] liking)