Breakdown of Daha önce hiç senin gibi biriyle karşılaşmadık.
sen
you
hiç
at all / any
daha
more
önce
before / first / firstly
ile
with / by / and (linking nouns)
gibi
like (similar to)
biri
someone / one (of them)
karşılaşmak
to encounter
Questions & Answers about Daha önce hiç senin gibi biriyle karşılaşmadık.
Why does the verb karşılaşmadık use the simple past tense ending (-dı) when the English translation uses "have never encountered"?
In Turkish, to talk about life experiences ("have you ever..." or "I have never..."), you use hiç combined with a past tense verb. While English requires the present perfect tense ("have encountered") for this, Turkish simply uses the negative simple past (-dı) or the negative inferential past (-mış). Here, hiç ... karşılaşmadık is the natural way to express "we have never encountered".
Can I drop hiç and just say Daha önce senin gibi biriyle karşılaşmadık?
Grammatically, yes. Without hiç, it just means "We didn't encounter someone like you before." However, adding hiç (ever/never) gives it that strong "never in our entire lives up to this point" feeling, which is exactly how Turkish expresses this kind of life experience.
Why is it biriyle ("with someone")? The English translation just says "encountered someone".
The verb karşılaşmak (to encounter / to meet by chance) requires the "with" ending (-(y)la/-(y)le) for the person or thing you are encountering. In Turkish logic, you don't encounter someone; you encounter with someone. biriyle is biri (someone) combined with the ending -(y)le.
Why does gibi (like) take the genitive pronoun senin instead of just sen?
When the postposition gibi is used with most personal pronouns (I, you, we, etc.) or the demonstrative pronoun bu (this), the pronoun must take the genitive (possessive) case. This is why you must say benim gibi (like me), senin gibi (like you), and bizim gibi (like us).
How is the verb karşılaşmadık built?
It starts with the root word karşı (opposite/against). Adding the suffix -laş turns it into the reciprocal verb karşılaşmak (to come face-to-face with each other / to encounter). Then we add the negative marker -ma, the past tense -dı, and finally the "we" ending -k.
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