Questions & Answers about Bu elbisenin fiyatı çok pahalı.
Why is it elbisenin and not just elbise?
Why is there an extra -n- in the middle of elbisenin?
The word elbise ends in a vowel. The genitive suffix here is -in. To prevent two vowels from crashing into each other, Turkish inserts a buffer letter. For the genitive case, that buffer is always n (unlike the y used for words like "to" or "the"). So it becomes elbise + n + in.
Why does fiyat (price) have an -ı at the end?
In Turkish, possession works like a two-way street. Not only does the owner get a suffix (like elbisenin), but the owned thing also gets a possessive suffix. Fiyat takes the 3rd-person singular possessive suffix -ı to become fiyatı (its price). Together, elbisenin fiyatı literally translates to "the dress's its price".
I've seen the genitive suffix written as -nın. Why is it -nin here?
This is due to 4-way vowel harmony. The last vowel in elbise is e. Because of this front vowel, the suffix must match it by using i, making it -nin. If the word had ended in a back vowel like a or ı (such as araba), it would take -nın instead.
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