Breakdown of Herkes kendine dikkat etmeli, çünkü ofiste nezle var.
var
there is / existent
ofis
office
çünkü
because
herkes
everyone
Questions & Answers about Herkes kendine dikkat etmeli, çünkü ofiste nezle var.
How is the "must" suffix formed in dikkat etmeli, and why is there no personal suffix?
We take the verb root et (from dikkat etmek) and add the obligation suffix -meli. There is no personal suffix added to the very end because the subject is herkes (everyone). In Turkish, herkes is grammatically singular and takes the third-person singular form, exactly like o (he/she/it).
Why is the word kendi (self) written as kendine here?
The verb dikkat etmek (to be careful / pay attention) requires the dative case suffix (-e or -a, usually meaning "to") on the thing you are paying attention to. To add the dative -e to the vowel-ending word kendi, we must use the buffer letter -n-, resulting in kendine (to oneself / to themselves).
We translate ofiste nezle var as "there is a cold in the office". Is this the normal way to say a bug is going around?
Yes! Literally, it translates to "in the office, cold exists". While English uses action-oriented phrases like "a cold is going around" or "everyone is catching a cold", Turkish very commonly uses the existence word var to state that an illness is present in a location.
Just a quick refresher, why is it ofiste and not ofisde?