Learn Turkish: Kaptan birinci maçta sakatlanmasaydı, maçı kaybetmezdik. - If the captain hadn't gotten injured in the first match, we wouldn't have lost the match.

Sure! It means "if he had not gotten injured" and is built by stacking suffixes: sakatlan- (to get injured), -ma (negative suffix), -sa (conditional suffix meaning "if"), -y- (buffer letter), and -dı (past tense suffix). This specific combination (-masaydı) forms the negative past counterfactual ("if X hadn't happened"), which is the focus of this lesson.

Why do we use the negative aorist in kaybetmezdik for "we wouldn't have lost"?

When we make "Type 3" conditionals about an unreal past (things that didn't actually happen), the main result clause usually takes the past form of the aorist tense. Here we have kaybet- (to lose) + -mez (negative aorist) + -di (past tense) + -k ("we" ending). In this "if" scenario, the past aorist translates to "would not have" in English.

Why does the word for "match" appear as maçta first, and then maçı?

They take different case endings because they play different roles in their halves of the sentence. Birinci maçta takes the locative case (-ta, meaning "in/at") because the captain was injured in the first match. Maçı takes the accusative case (-ı) because it is the specific direct object of the verb to lose ("lose the match").

Does the verb sakatlanmak come from another word?