Questions & Answers about Kuş evin çatısına uçuyor.
How does evin çatısına translate to "to the roof of the house"?
In Turkish, possession ("of" or "'s") is formed using a pair of suffixes. First, ev (house) gets the genitive suffix -in to become evin (of the house / house's). Then, çatı (roof) gets the possessive suffix -sı to show it belongs to the house. Together, evin çatısı means "the house's roof" or "the roof of the house".
Why is the genitive suffix -in here, but on other words it might be -nın?
The full genitive suffix is -(n)in. If a noun ends in a vowel, you must use the buffer letter -n- first (like in arabanın). Because ev ends in a consonant, you don't need the buffer. Then, 4-way vowel harmony changes the suffix vowel to i to match the e in ev, giving us evin.
Where does the -na at the end of çatısına come from?
It is actually the buffer letter -n- followed by the dative suffix -a (meaning "to"). The verb uçuyor (is flying) requires the dative case on the destination. Whenever you add a case suffix like -a to a word that already has a possessive suffix on it (like çatısı), you must use the special buffer -n- in between.
Why is it translated as "The bird" if there is no word for "the" in the sentence?
Turkish doesn't have a direct translation for the definite article "the". When a noun is the subject at the start of a sentence, it is usually understood as specific ("the bird"). If you wanted to say "A bird is flying...", you would use the word bir (a/one) and say Bir kuş evin çatısına uçuyor.
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