Breakdown of Kadın telefonda bir numara çeviriyordu.
bir
a / an
kadın
woman
telefon
phone
numara
number
çevirmek
to dial
Questions & Answers about Kadın telefonda bir numara çeviriyordu.
How do we build the word çeviriyordu to mean "was dialing"?
This uses the past continuous tense, which expresses what someone was doing. You take the verb root çevir-, add the present continuous suffix -iyor to get çeviriyor (is dialing), and then attach the past tense suffix -du to get çeviriyordu (was dialing). Because the subject is kadın (she/third-person singular), we don't need to add any personal pronoun suffix at the end.
I thought çevirmek meant "to turn". Why does it mean "to dial" here?
The core meaning of çevirmek is indeed "to turn". Before smartphones and push-buttons, people used rotary phones where you literally had to turn a circular dial to make a call. The phrase numara çevirmek (to dial a number) has survived into the modern era!
Why is the locative case -da used in telefonda if the English translation is "on the phone"?
English uses the preposition "on" for phones, computers, and TV. Turkish generally uses the locative case suffix -da or -de (meaning "in" or "at") when referring to being on a device or medium. So telefonda is how you say "on the phone".
Why isn't the accusative case used for the number (numarayı)?
In Turkish, you only use the accusative case suffix on a direct object if it is specific or definite (like "the number" or "his number"). Here, she is dialing just a general number (bir numara). Because it is indefinite, numara stays in its plain dictionary form.
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