Breakdown of Ziyaretçiler camiye ne zaman gireceklerini soruyorlar.
sormak
to ask
girmek
to enter
ne zaman
when
ziyaretçi
visitor
cami
mosque
Questions & Answers about Ziyaretçiler camiye ne zaman gireceklerini soruyorlar.
How does the grammar of indirect questions work in ne zaman gireceklerini?
In Turkish, indirect questions are treated as noun phrases. Instead of asking a direct question, the sentence literally says they are asking about 'what time their future entering' will be. We keep the question word ne zaman but change the verb girmek into a noun-like clause using the future factive suffix -ecek.
Can you break down the long stack of suffixes in gireceklerini?
Sure! It breaks down as gir (enter) + ecek (future factive) + ler (plural) + i (possessive, making 'their entering') + n (buffer letter) + i (accusative case). The final accusative -i is required because this entire indirect question acts as the direct object of the main verb soruyorlar (they are asking).
Why does the word for mosque take the dative case (camiye) instead of the accusative?
The verb girmek (to enter) requires the dative case for the place being entered. In English you just enter a place, but in Turkish you always enter 'to' or 'into' a place. Therefore, cami takes the dative suffix -(y)e, becoming camiye.
There are three plural suffixes in this sentence (ziyaretçiler, gireceklerini, soruyorlar). Do we need all of them?
In formal writing, this strict agreement is correct, but in everyday spoken Turkish, redundant plurals are often dropped when the subject is already obviously plural. It is very natural to hear Ziyaretçiler camiye ne zaman gireceğini soruyor, dropping the extra plural markers on the verbs to avoid heavy repetition.
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