Learn Turkish: Öğrenciler beraber çalışıyorlarsa sessizce konuşuyorlar. - If the students are studying together, they are talking quietly.

It perfectly shows the rule for this lesson! It breaks down as çalış (study) + ıyor (is doing) + lar (they) + sa (if). Put together, it translates to "if they are studying".

I noticed the plural -lar comes before the conditional -sa in çalışıyorlarsa. Can they be swapped?

Yes! You can also say çalışıyorsalar (çalış + ıyor + sa + lar). Both are grammatically correct and mean the exact same thing, but putting -lar before -sa is much more common in spoken Turkish.

How does sessizce translate to "quietly"?

It is built from three parts. We start with ses (sound or voice) and add siz (without) to make sessiz (quiet). Finally, adding the suffix -ce turns it into an adverb that describes how the action is done, just like adding "-ly" in English.

Because Öğrenciler (students) is already plural, do the verbs still need the -lar suffix?