Learn Turkish: Doğumdan beri sürekli ağlıyor çünkü hasta. - He has been crying constantly since birth because he is sick.

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."

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

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.

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

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.

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