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Questions & Answers about Mola yirmi dakika.
Why is dakika not plural if it means "twenty minutes"?
In Turkish, whenever you put a number before a noun, the noun stays singular. Even though it's more than one minute, you say yirmi dakika, never yirmi dakikalar.
Where is the word for "is" in Mola yirmi dakika?
In simple present-tense statements, Turkish often drops the "to be" verb (like "is" or "are"). You just put the subject (Mola) and its description (yirmi dakika) together, and the "is" is automatically understood.
We are learning about telling the time (like saat üç). Can I use saat here?
You wouldn't use saat here because saat means "hour" or "o'clock." This sentence is specifically about minutes (dakika). Also, this sentence describes a duration (how long the break lasts), whereas a phrase like saat üç states a specific time on the clock.
How do I ask "How many minutes is the break?" to get this sentence as an answer?
You use the question word kaç (how many). In Turkish, to ask a question that results in a number, you just replace the number in the sentence with kaç. So you would ask: Mola kaç dakika?