Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching Turkish grammar and vocabulary.
Questions & Answers about O adama bakma.
Why is there an -a at the end of adama?
The word adam means 'man'. The -a is the dative case suffix, which usually means 'to' or 'for'. In Turkish, the verb bakmak (to look) requires the object you are looking at to have this suffix. So literally, this sentence says 'Do not look to that man'.
Where is the Turkish word for 'at' in this sentence?
Doesn't o usually mean 'he', 'she', or 'it'?
Yes, but it also means 'that' when placed directly in front of a noun. Since it comes right before adama (to the man), it acts as a describing word meaning 'that man'. If it meant 'he', it would usually be separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma.
How does bakma mean 'do not look'?
The dictionary form of the verb is bakmak (to look). If you drop the -mak, you get the basic command form bak (look!). To make a command negative, you add -ma or -me based on vowel harmony. Since bak has the vowel 'a', we add -ma to get bakma (do not look!).