Breakdown of İyi ki o binadan çıktık, başka kurtuluş yoktu.
o
that / he / she / it
yok
there is not / non-existent
bina
building
çıkmak
to go out / to leave / to exit / to break out / to arise (of a storm)
başka
other / another / else
iyi ki
fortunately / it is a good thing that
kurtuluş
escape (deliverance, liberation) / salvation
Questions & Answers about İyi ki o binadan çıktık, başka kurtuluş yoktu.
How does iyi ki work in this sentence?
İyi ki translates to "fortunately" or "it's a good thing that." It acts as an evaluative marker showing the speaker's relief. In Turkish, it is very straightforward to use: you simply put it at the start of the clause, and the verb that goes with it just takes a regular, finite tense. Here, it is followed directly by the simple past tense verb çıktık (we left).
Why does the word for building have the -dan suffix in binadan?
The verb çıkmak (to leave, to exit, to go out) requires the ablative case, which is the -dan or -den suffix meaning "from." While in English you say "we left the building," in Turkish you literally say "we exited from the building."
Is the noun kurtuluş (escape) related to a verb?
Yes, it comes from the verb kurtulmak, which means "to escape" or "to be saved." By adding the verbal noun suffix -uş to the stem kurtul-, it turns into the noun kurtuluş, meaning "escape" or "salvation."
Why use yoktu instead of just yok?
The word yok means "there is no" in the present tense. To talk about the past, you attach the past tense copula suffix to it. Following vowel harmony and consonant assimilation, the suffix becomes -tu, creating yoktu (there was no). This matches the past tense timeline set by çıktık earlier in the sentence.
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