Breakdown of Keşke bina çöker çökmez oradan kaçsalardı!
bina
building
orada
over there
kaçmak
to run away
keşke
if only / I wish
Questions & Answers about Keşke bina çöker çökmez oradan kaçsalardı!
How exactly does çöker çökmez mean "as soon as"?
This is the "converb of immediacy," created by putting the same verb back-to-back: first in the aorist affirmative (çöker), then in the aorist negative (çökmez). Together, they literally mean "it collapses, it doesn't collapse," but this pattern is used in Turkish to mean "the very second [verb] happens." The root here is çökmek (to collapse).
The aorist is usually a present tense, so why does çöker çökmez translate to the past tense "as soon as the building collapsed"?
The -Ir -mAz structure doesn't have its own fixed time. Instead, it acts as a relative time-stamp that borrows its tense from the main verb of the sentence. Because the main verb kaçsalardı (they had run away) refers to the past, çöker çökmez is understood as happening in the past too.
Why is the main verb kaçsalardı instead of a regular past tense like kaçtılar?
The word keşke (if only / I wish) requires a conditional verb form. To express a deep regret about a missed opportunity in the past ("if only they had run away"), we combine the conditional suffix -sa with the past tense suffix -dı. So kaçsalardı means "if only they had run away," whereas kaçtılar would just be a factual statement meaning "they ran away."
Could I also write kaçsaydılar instead of kaçsalardı?