Question 1

How is the word yemyeşil formed to mean "lush green"?

Accepted Answer

yemyeşil is an intensified adjective. To emphasize an adjective in Turkish, we often take its first syllable (ye from yeşil), add one of four consonant letters (m, p, r, or s), and attach it back to the front of the word. Here, it becomes ye + m + yeşil = yemyeşil.

Question 2

Is there a rule for why we use m instead of p, r, or s in yemyeşil?

Accepted Answer

Unfortunately, there is no strict grammatical rule to predict which of those four consonants a word will take. It mostly comes down to which letter makes the word sound best to native ears. You simply have to memorize the intensified forms of common adjectives as vocabulary words, just like kıpkırmızı (bright red) or masmavi (bright blue).

Question 3

Why does the sentence use yağdıktan sonra instead of just yağmurdan sonra?

Accepted Answer

yağmurdan sonra means "after the rain" (using the noun). However, this sentence emphasizes the action of raining. To say "after doing an action", Turkish uses the verb root (yağ-) plus -dıktan (or -dikten, etc.) plus sonra. So yağdıktan sonra literally translates to "after the raining happens."

Question 4

Since ağaçlar (trees) is plural, shouldn't the verb be the plural oluyorlar?

Accepted Answer

In Turkish, when the subject of a sentence is plural but inanimate (meaning non-human things like trees, objects, or animals), the verb is almost always kept in the singular form. Because ağaçlar are not human, we use the singular oluyor instead of the plural oluyorlar.

Yağmur yağdıktan sonra ağaçlar yemyeşil oluyor mu?

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