Questions & Answers about Bu bir okuma ve yazma kursu.
Why do we use okuma and yazma instead of the full infinitives okumak and yazmak?
okuma and yazma are verbal nouns (short infinitives). You make them by adding -ma or -me to the verb stem. When we link a verb-turned-noun to another noun to make a compound concept like "reading course", Turkish requires this short -ma or -me form, not the full -mak or -mek infinitive.
Doesn't the -ma suffix usually make a verb negative, like "don't read"? How do I tell the difference?
You are exactly right that they look identical! The negative suffix and the verbal noun suffix are both -ma or -me. You usually tell them apart by context. Here, "a don't read and don't write course" doesn't make sense, so they must be the nouns "reading" and "writing". In spoken Turkish, they also sound slightly different because the voice stress falls on different syllables.
Why does the word for course have a -u at the end (kursu) instead of just being kurs?
This is a noun compound. In Turkish, when you put two nouns together to create a specific category or concept (like "reading course" or "apple juice"), the second noun has to take a possessive suffix. To link the "reading and writing" concept to the course, kurs gets the suffix -u to become kursu.