Learn Hardcore Turkish: Yağmur aniden duruverdi, sokak birden aydınlandı. - The rain suddenly stopped, and the street suddenly lit up.

Yağmur aniden durdu → The rain suddenly stopped. (neutral)
Yağmur aniden duruverdi → The rain suddenly just stopped / stopped all of a sudden like that. (more vivid, colloquial, with speaker attitude)

It’s very common in speech and narrative to make the action feel quick and almost surprising.

Is -ver- in duruverdi always about “suddenly”? Does it always go with aniden?

The -ver- auxiliary often adds meanings like:

quickness: do something quickly
ease / lack of effort: just do it, without much fuss
suddenness or spontaneity: do it all of a sudden
sometimes a slightly casual or even dismissive tone, depending on context

Examples:

Kapıyı kapatıverdin. – You just (quickly) shut the door.
Söyleyiverdim. – I just blurted it out.

It doesn’t have to be about “suddenly” and it doesn’t have to appear with aniden. The adverb aniden just reinforces the idea of a sudden event in this specific sentence.

So:

Yağmur duruverdi. – already suggests a quick, almost sudden stop.
Yağmur aniden duruverdi. – strongly emphasizes the suddenness (like The rain suddenly just stopped).

Why does the sentence use aniden with duruverdi and birden with aydınlandı? Are aniden and birden the same?

Both aniden and birden basically mean suddenly / all of a sudden.

aniden – more neutral/formal, from ani (sudden) + -den
birden – very common in speech, literally “from one (moment) to (the next)”

In this sentence:

Yağmur aniden duruverdi – The rain suddenly just stopped.
sokak birden aydınlandı – the street suddenly lit up.

They could be swapped without breaking the grammar:

Yağmur birden duruverdi, sokak aniden aydınlandı. – still natural.

The writer simply varies the expression and rhythm by using two different but very similar adverbs. It also avoids repetition of the same word.

Could the sentence just use one adverb, like only aniden or only birden?

Yes. Grammatically:

Yağmur duruverdi, sokak aydınlandı. – correct, but less dramatic.
Yağmur aniden duruverdi, sokak aydınlandı.
Yağmur duruverdi, sokak birden aydınlandı.

The adverbs aniden and birden intensify the feeling of a sudden, almost magical change. Using both in the original sentence is stylistic emphasis, not a grammatical necessity.

Is it redundant to say both aniden and also use duruverdi, since both suggest suddenness?

It’s not considered wrong or bad style in Turkish. This kind of “double marking” is common for emphasis.

Compare in English:

The rain suddenly just stopped.
It completely, suddenly went quiet.

Turkish likes stacking:

Yağmur aniden duruverdi. – suddenness expressed by both aniden and -ver-.
It makes the event sound more vivid and dramatic, not redundant in a negative sense.

Why is there a comma between the two parts instead of ve (and)? Is omitting ve normal?

The two clauses are:

Yağmur aniden duruverdi – The rain suddenly stopped.
sokak birden aydınlandı – the street suddenly lit up.

Turkish often joins closely related events by just putting them side by side with a comma, without ve:

Kapı açıldı, içeri biri girdi. – The door opened, someone came in.

Using ve is also correct:

Yağmur aniden duruverdi ve sokak birden aydınlandı.

But leaving out ve:

feels more like narrative description,
makes the second event feel like an immediate consequence or follow-up to the first,
gives a slightly more literary or “storytelling” rhythm.

How is aydınlandı formed, and what exactly does it mean?

Aydınlandı breaks down as:

aydın – bright, light (adjective)
-lan- – inchoative / become-suffix: to become X
-dı – simple past ending (3rd person singular)

So aydınlanmak ≈ to become bright, to light up (intransitive).

sokak birden aydınlandı → the street suddenly became bright / suddenly lit up.

It describes a change of state: dark → bright, not an action done to something.

Why not say sokak aydın oldu or sokak aydınlaştı instead of sokak aydınlandı?

These forms are not identical in usage:

sokak aydınlandı – natural and idiomatic: the street lit up / became bright.
aydınlanmak is the standard verb used for light appearing or a place becoming brighter.

Alternatives:

sokak aydın oldu – sounds odd; aydın is an adjective, and olmak works in some patterns (mutlu oldu, hasta oldu), but aydın oldu for “got bright” is not usual for a place.
sokak aydınlaştı – possible, more like the street got brighter / became more enlightened/clearer. Aydınlaşmak often has an abstract sense (ideas, minds becoming clearer).

For this physical lighting-up image, aydınlanmak is the most natural choice.

Can the word order change in sokak birden aydınlandı? For example, can I say Birden sokak aydınlandı?

Yes, Turkish word order is flexible, especially for adverbs.

These are all grammatically correct:

Sokak birden aydınlandı. – neutral, slight emphasis on birden.
Birden sokak aydınlandı. – strong emphasis on all of a sudden; good in storytelling.
Sokak aydınlandı birden. – more poetic or spoken, emphasizes birden at the end.

The basic structure [subject] [adverb] [verb] is the most neutral, but moving the adverb changes the nuance and focus, not the core meaning.

What tense is used in duruverdi and aydınlandı? Is it simple past or something special?

Both verbs use the simple past tense with -di:

duruver-di
aydınlan-dı

This -di past usually indicates:

completed action in the past
the speaker knows it as a definite fact (often from direct experience or reliable knowledge)

There is no special “literary” tense here—only the aspectual -ver- makes duruverdi more expressive. Without that:

Yağmur durdu, sokak aydınlandı. – still simple past, just more neutral.

Are birden and birdenbire different, or can they be used interchangeably?

They are very close in meaning:

birden – suddenly, all of a sudden
birdenbire – very suddenly, all of a sudden, slightly more emphatic and a bit more expressive.

You could say:

Sokak birdenbire aydınlandı. – The street all of a sudden lit up.

So:

birden – short, very common.
birdenbire – more emphatic, slightly more “dramatic” or story-like.

In this sentence, replacing birden with birdenbire would still be perfectly natural.