Question 1

How does doğumdan beri work to mean "since birth"?

Accepted Answer

The word beri means "since," and it always requires the preceding noun to take the ablative "from" case ending. So doğum (birth) becomes doğumdan (from birth), and together doğumdan beri creates the meaning "since birth."

Question 2

Why does the Turkish sentence use ağlıyor (is crying) when the English translation says "has been crying"?

Accepted Answer

English uses a special tense (present perfect continuous) for actions that started in the past and are still happening now. Turkish simply uses the standard present continuous tense (-iyor) alongside a time phrase like -dan beri to express the exact same idea.

Question 3

The verb stem for "to cry" is ağla-. Why is it spelled ağlıyor instead of ağlayor?

Accepted Answer

This is due to a rule called vowel narrowing. When a verb stem ends in the wide vowels -a or -e, that vowel changes to a narrow one (ı, i, u, ü) before the -yor suffix is added. Therefore, ağla- narrows to ağlı- before taking the continuous ending.

Question 4

How does hasta on its own mean "he is sick"?

Accepted Answer

Turkish often drops the subject pronoun o (he/she/it) when who you are talking about is already obvious. Additionally, the "is" part for the third-person singular often requires no suffix at all in casual sentences. So the adjective hasta (sick) alone can function as the complete phrase "he is sick."

Doğumdan beri sürekli ağlıyor çünkü hasta.

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