Breakdown of Binaya sızmasına rağmen hiçbir belge bulmadı.
bina
building
bulmak
to find
belge
document
hiçbir
no / not any (determiner)
rağmen
despite / in spite of
sızmak
to infiltrate
Questions & Answers about Binaya sızmasına rağmen hiçbir belge bulmadı.
How does sızmasına rağmen translate to 'despite infiltrating'?
This is the standard way to say 'despite doing an action' in Turkish. You take the short verbal noun sızma (infiltrating), add a possessive suffix to show who is doing it (here, -sı for 'his/her'), and finally add the dative case -a (with the buffer -n-) to make sızmasına. This is because the word rağmen (despite) always requires the preceding word to take the dative case.
Why is it Binaya (with the dative ending -ya) instead of the accusative Binayı?
In English you 'infiltrate' a direct object, but the Turkish verb sızmak literally means 'to leak' or 'to seep'. Therefore, it requires the dative case to show the direction of the movement: leaking into the building.
'Documents' is plural in the English translation. Why isn't it belgeler in Turkish?
Are the -ma in sızmasına and the -ma in bulmadı the same suffix?
No, they look identical but do completely different jobs. In sızmasına, -ma is the short verbal noun suffix turning the verb into the noun 'infiltrating'. In bulmadı, -ma is the negative suffix, changing the verb to mean 'did not find'.
Learn Binaya sızmasına rağmen hiçbir belge bulmadı and more in Turkish
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free