Learn Turkish: Arkadaşımı tiyatroya gitmeye ikna ettim. - I convinced my friend to go to the theater.

In Turkish, certain verbs require the action you are doing to take the dative case (the to/toward direction). The verb ikna etmek (to convince) is one of them! You convince someone 'to' an action. To do this, we take the short verbal noun gitme (going), add the buffer letter -y-, and then the dative suffix -e, resulting in gitmeye.

Why does arkadaşımı have two -ı / -i sounds at the end?

Let's break it down! The root is arkadaş (friend). The first suffix is -ım, which means 'my' (my friend). The second suffix is the accusative case -ı, which marks 'my friend' as the specific direct object you are convincing. Together they make arkadaşımı.

Since we are going to the theater, why is it tiyatroya instead of tiyatroye?

Turkish uses vowel harmony to decide which suffix to use. The last vowel in tiyatro is 'o', which is a hard (back) vowel. Therefore, it takes the hard dative suffix -a (with a buffer -y-), making it tiyatroya. The soft suffix -e is only used after soft (front) vowels.

How does ikna ettim work?