Breakdown of Bütün gün oflaya oflaya çalıştık.
çalışmak
to work / to study
gün
day
bütün
all, whole
oflamak
to sigh / to huff
Questions & Answers about Bütün gün oflaya oflaya çalıştık.
How is the phrase oflaya oflaya formed?
The root verb is ofla-, which means to sigh, groan, or puff. The grammar structure you are learning creates an adverb of manner by repeating the verb root and adding -a or -e. Because ofla- ends in a vowel, we must use the buffer letter y, resulting in oflaya oflaya.
Is oflamak a real verb, or just a sound effect?
It is a real verb, but it is created from the exclamation of (ugh, phew, sigh). Turkish frequently turns sounds or exclamations into verbs by adding -la or -le. For example, hav (woof) becomes havla- (to bark). So oflamak literally means to make an 'of' sound.
Why is it just bütün gün? Shouldn't it have a case ending like the accusative bütün günü?
Time expressions like bütün gün (all day) or her gün (every day) usually act as adverbs telling us when or for how long an action happened. In these cases, they stay in their plain dictionary form. You would only use the accusative bütün günü if the day itself was the direct object of the sentence, such as in the sentence Bütün günü ofiste harcadım (I spent the whole day at the office).
Since the action happened all day, could we use the past continuous çalışıyorduk instead of çalıştık?
Yes, you absolutely could say çalışıyorduk (we were working). Using the simple past çalıştık just states the work as a completed, closed fact. Using the past continuous çalışıyorduk would paint a more vivid picture of the ongoing process of you suffering through the work. Both are natural and grammatically correct here.
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