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Questions & Answers about Cevap yanlıştı.
Why does yanlış take -tı instead of -dı for "was"?
This happens because of consonant harmony (often called the "Fıstıkçı Şahap" rule). The word yanlış ends with the voiceless consonant ş. When you add a suffix that starts with d to a voiceless consonant, the d changes to its voiceless pair, t. So, the past tense ending -dı becomes -tı.
How do we know which vowel to use in the -tı ending?
The past copula (was/were) follows 4-way vowel harmony. You always look at the last vowel in the word it attaches to. The last vowel in yanlış is ı. According to the 4-way harmony rules, if the last vowel is a or ı, the suffix uses ı. That gives us -tı.
Why isn't there a word for "the" before cevap?
Turkish does not have a separate word for the definite article "the". When a noun like cevap (answer) is the subject of the sentence, we usually understand it as specific ("the answer") rather than general ("an answer") based on the context.