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Salyangoz ufakça bir mercan yiyor.

Salyangoz ufakça bir mercan yiyor.
The snail is eating a rather small coral.
From Lesson 288:Adjective softening (-ce / -ça)·Turkish

Breakdown of Salyangoz ufakça bir mercan yiyor.

bir
a / an
yemek
to eat
ufak
small / little
mercan
coral
salyangoz
snail

Questions & Answers about Salyangoz ufakça bir mercan yiyor.

How does the suffix -ça change the meaning of ufak in this sentence?
The word ufak means "small." When we attach the softening suffix -ça, it acts like the English suffix "-ish" or words like "rather" and "somewhat." It softens the adjective, so ufakça means "rather small" or "smallish."
Why does the suffix take the form -ça here instead of -ca?
This is due to consonant harmony (often remembered by the rule Fıstıkçı Şahap). The root word ufak ends with the voiceless consonant k. When adding a suffix that normally starts with the voiced consonant c, it must harden to ç to match. Combined with a-type vowel harmony, the suffix becomes -ça.
Why is the word order ufakça bir mercan instead of bir ufakça mercan?
In Turkish, when a noun has both an adjective and the indefinite article bir (a/an), the adjective almost always comes first. The standard pattern is [Adjective] + bir + [Noun], which literally translates as "rather small a coral."
I know the verb "to eat" is yemek. Why is it spelled yiyor here instead of yeyor?
This is a great time for a quick refresher on vowel narrowing. When a verb root ends in a wide vowel like -e (as in ye-) or -a, adding the present continuous suffix -yor causes that vowel to narrow into ı, i, u, or ü. Therefore, ye- changes to yi-, giving us yiyor.

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