Learn Turkish: Şanslıydın çünkü sınav kolaydı. - You were lucky because the exam was easy.

Turkish builds meaning by stacking suffixes. We start with the noun şans (luck). Adding -lı makes the adjective şanslı (lucky). Then we add the buffer -y- because the word ends in a vowel, followed by the past tense -dı (was/were), and finally -n for "you".

Why is there a buffer -y- in şanslıydın but not in kolaydı? Doesn't kolay end in a "y"?

In Turkish, y is always a consonant! The buffer -y- is only needed when attaching the past tense suffix to a word that ends in a vowel, like şanslı. Since kolay ends in the consonant y, we just attach -dı directly to make kolaydı.

Why do both words use the exact same -dı ending for the past tense?

This is due to 4-way vowel harmony. The past tense suffix can be -dı, -di, -du, or -dü. You look at the last vowel of the word. The last vowel in şanslı is ı, and the last vowel in kolay is a. Both of these vowels dictate the ı sound for the suffix, so they both take -dı.

In , why isn't there an extra suffix at the end like the in ?