Breakdown of Toplantı odası bugün boş, orada sessizce çalışabiliriz.
Questions & Answers about Toplantı odası bugün boş, orada sessizce çalışabiliriz.
Toplantı odası is a noun–noun compound and literally means “the room of meeting” → “meeting room.”
Structure:
- toplantı – meeting
- oda-sı – room-its
The ending -sı is the 3rd person possessive suffix (its). In Turkish, it’s very often used to build compound nouns:
- yemek odası – dining room (room of eating)
- yatak odası – bedroom (room of bed)
- çalışma odası – study room (room of working)
So Toplantı oda is ungrammatical; you need Toplantı odası as the standard way to say meeting room.
Turkish usually drops a separate “to be” verb in the present tense, especially in simple statements with adjectives or nouns.
- Toplantı odası bugün boş.
Literally: Meeting room today empty.
Meaning: The meeting room is empty today.
This is called a nominal sentence. The “is” meaning is understood from the structure and context. You can optionally add a formal -dır/-dir ending:
- Toplantı odası bugün boştur. – more formal / factual in tone
But in everyday speech, Toplantı odası bugün boş is completely normal and natural.
In this context, boş means both “empty” and “free / available.”
For rooms, boş typically implies:
- no one is using it (empty)
- therefore it is available to use
Similarly:
- Bu sandalye boş. – This chair is empty / free.
- Bu akşam boş musun? – Are you free this evening?
So in Toplantı odası bugün boş, the idea is:
“The meeting room is empty today (so it’s free / available).”
bugün means “today” and is an adverb of time modifying the whole statement.
Default sentence in the example:
- Toplantı odası bugün boş.
You can move bugün:
- Bugün toplantı odası boş. – Neutral, maybe slight emphasis on “today.”
- Toplantı odası boş bugün. – More spoken, with “today” as a kind of afterthought or emphasis.
All three are grammatically correct; Turkish word order is fairly flexible. The last position often carries emphasis, so what you put last tends to be highlighted slightly.
The original has:
- Toplantı odası bugün boş, orada sessizce çalışabiliriz.
This is really two closely related clauses:
- Toplantı odası bugün boş. – The meeting room is empty today.
- Orada sessizce çalışabiliriz. – We can work quietly there.
In Turkish, it’s common to just put a comma between such short related clauses, especially when the second is an immediate consequence of the first. You could also write:
- Toplantı odası bugün boş ve orada sessizce çalışabiliriz.
That’s also correct, but the comma-only version feels a bit more natural and conversational, almost like saying in English:
“The meeting room is empty today, we can work quietly there.”
All three are built from ora- (“that place, there”) plus a case ending:
- orada – in/at there (locative: -da/-de)
- Orada çalışabiliriz. – We can work there (in that place).
- oraya – to there (dative: -a/-e)
- Oraya gidelim. – Let’s go there.
- oradan – from there (ablative: -dan/-den)
- Oradan geliyorum. – I’m coming from there.
In your sentence, we are talking about where we can work (a location we stay in), so orada (in/at there) is the correct form:
- orada sessizce çalışabiliriz → we can work quietly there (in that room).
Both ideas are partly true:
- sessiz – quiet (adjective)
- sessizce – quietly (adverb form, made with -ce/-ca)
In Turkish, adjectives can sometimes function as adverbs without any suffix, but:
- sessizce is the most natural adverb form for “quietly.”
- sessiz çalışmak often sounds more like “to work in a quiet (environment)” rather than “to work quietly (oneself).”
Compare:
- Sessiz bir odada çalışıyoruz. – We are working in a quiet room.
- Orada sessizce çalışabiliriz. – We can work quietly there.
You could also say:
- Orada sessiz bir şekilde çalışabiliriz. – We can work in a quiet way there.
But sessizce is shorter and very common.
Yes. çalışabiliriz = çalış-a-bil-ir-iz
- çalış- – root: to work / to study
- -a- – linking vowel (often just helps attach the next suffix)
- -bil- – ability / possibility suffix → can, be able to
- -ir – aorist/“present general” tense marker
- -iz – 1st person plural ending → we
So çalışabiliriz means:
- “we can work / we are able to work / we may work”
In context, with orada, it’s “we can work (quietly) there.”
The key element is -bil-, the ability/possibility suffix.
- çalışırız – we (normally / habitually) work
- Pazartesiden cumaya çalışırız. – We work from Monday to Friday.
- çalışacağız – we will work
- Yarın çalışacağız. – We will work tomorrow.
- çalışabiliriz – we can / are able to / may work
- Orada sessizce çalışabiliriz. – We can work quietly there (it’s possible, permitted, or a good idea).
So -bil- adds the meaning of possibility or ability, making çalışabiliriz equivalent to “we can work.”
In Turkish, personal endings on the verb already show the subject, so subject pronouns (ben, sen, o, biz, siz, onlar) are usually omitted unless you want emphasis or contrast.
- çalışabiliriz – we can work
(the -iz ending already means “we”)
You would add biz mainly if you want to stress “we (as opposed to others)”:
- Biz orada sessizce çalışabiliriz.
– We can work quietly there (but maybe others can’t / won’t).
Yes, Turkish word order is flexible, especially with adverbs. All of these are grammatically correct, but they have slightly different rhythms and emphases:
- Orada sessizce çalışabiliriz. – neutral; location then manner.
- Sessizce orada çalışabiliriz. – emphasizes “quietly” a bit more: Quietly, we can work there.
- Orada çalışabiliriz sessizce. – everyday/speechy; sessizce feels like an afterthought or extra emphasis: We can work there, quietly.
The most standard, natural version for neutral context is the original:
- Orada sessizce çalışabiliriz.
Yes. You could write:
- Toplantı odası bugün boş. Orada sessizce çalışabiliriz.
This is perfectly correct and actually a bit clearer in writing, because it shows there are two full sentences.
Using a comma instead:
- Toplantı odası bugün boş, orada sessizce çalışabiliriz.
is common in informal writing and mirrors how people speak: they often don’t pause strongly between the two clauses. Both versions are acceptable; the meaning is the same.