Word
O vizyoner bir mühendisti, hatta bir dâhiydi.
Meaning
He was a visionary engineer, in fact, he was a genius.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of O vizyoner bir mühendisti, hatta bir dâhiydi.
bir
a / an
o
that / he / she / it
mühendis
engineer
dâhi
genius
Questions & Answers about O vizyoner bir mühendisti, hatta bir dâhiydi.
How does the word hatta change the meaning of the sentence?
The word hatta is an escalating conjunction, meaning it takes the previous statement and pushes it a step further. It translates to "in fact," "moreover," or "even." Here, calling him a genius escalates the previous claim that he was a visionary engineer.
Why is there a circumflex (little hat) over the 'a' in dâhiydi?
The circumflex (called a şapka in Turkish) tells you to pronounce the 'a' longer. Crucially, it distinguishes the noun dâhi (genius) from the conjunction dahi (which means "also" or "too").
Why does mühendisti end in -ti while dâhiydi ends in -di?
Both use the past tense suffix for "was". Mühendis ends in a voiceless consonant ('s'), which changes the 'd' of the suffix to 't' due to consonant assimilation, giving us mühendisti. Dâhi ends in a vowel, so it takes the buffer letter y before the suffix, resulting in dâhiydi.
Why is bir placed after the adjective in vizyoner bir mühendisti?
In Turkish, when a singular noun is modified by both an adjective and the indefinite article bir (a/an), the normal word order is Adjective + bir + Noun. This is a strict rule, so saying bir vizyoner mühendis would sound unnatural to a native speaker.