Questions & Answers about Mercan bile ağırca.
How does the -ca suffix change the meaning of ağır in this sentence?
Ağır means heavy. Adding the softening suffix -ca weakens the adjective slightly, meaning quite heavy, rather heavy, or on the heavy side. It implies the coral isn't impossibly heavy, but it has more weight than you might expect.
Why does the softening suffix take the form -ca on ağır instead of -ce, -ça, or -çe?
It follows both vowel harmony and consonant mutation rules. The last vowel in ağır is ı, which is a back vowel, so we use the a form of the suffix. Since ağır ends in r, which is a voiced consonant (not one of the voiceless f, s, t, k, ç, ş, h, p sounds), the suffix starts with c instead of ç. This gives us ağırca.
Can I put bile at the start of the sentence to match the English translation Even the coral?
No, in Turkish, bile always comes immediately after the word or phrase it emphasizes. Since you want to emphasize the coral, bile must come directly after Mercan.
The English translation includes the word is. Why is there no word for is at the end of the Turkish sentence?
In Turkish, the third-person singular present tense for is is often left unsaid. While you could technically add the suffix -dır to make it ağırcadır, leaving it as just ağırca is perfectly natural and much more common in everyday speech.
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