Breakdown of Kıyıda yürüyüp masmavi denizi izliyorduk.
izlemek
to watch
yürümek
to walk
deniz
sea
kıyı
shore
Questions & Answers about Kıyıda yürüyüp masmavi denizi izliyorduk.
How exactly is the intensified adjective masmavi formed from mavi?
To intensify an adjective in Turkish, we take its first syllable (up to the first vowel), add one of the consonant letters m, p, r, or s, and then attach it to the front of the original word. For mavi (blue), the first part is ma. We add an s to make mas-, and attach it back to get masmavi (deep blue/completely blue). There is no strict rule for which consonant to choose; you just have to memorize the most common ones!
What does the -üp suffix in yürüyüp do here?
The -ip suffix (which becomes -üp here due to vowel harmony, plus the buffer y) is a very common way to connect two actions done by the same subject, acting like "and". Instead of saying yürüyorduk ve izliyorduk (we were walking and we were watching), Turkish uses yürüyüp to smoothly link the first action to the main verb.
If yürüyüp doesn't have a tense suffix, how do we know it means "we were walking"?
When you connect verbs using the -ip suffix, the connected verb automatically borrows the tense and the subject from the final verb in the sentence. Since the final verb is izliyorduk (we were watching), yürüyüp takes on that same past continuous meaning.