Breakdown of Vaktim yok, sonra konuşuyoruz.
yok
there is not / non-existent
konuşmak
to speak / to talk
sonra
later
vakit
time (available time)
Questions & Answers about Vaktim yok, sonra konuşuyoruz.
The current lesson uses saat for time. Can I say saatim yok here?
No, because saat specifically means "clock", "watch", or "hour". If you say saatim yok, a Turkish speaker will think you mean "I don't have a watch." When talking about having enough time to do an activity, you should use vakit or zaman.
I thought the word for time was vakit. Why does it become vaktim instead of vakitim?
This is an example of "vowel drop" in Turkish. When certain two-syllable words like vakit get a suffix that starts with a vowel (like the "my" ending -im), the second vowel in the root word drops out to make it smoother to pronounce. So, vakit + -im becomes vaktim.
How does vaktim yok mean "I have no time" if there is no verb for "to have"?
Turkish expresses "having" something by saying that your thing exists (var) or does not exist (yok). Vaktim means "my time". By adding yok, you are literally saying "My time doesn't exist"—which is the standard way Turkish speakers say "I don't have time."
Why is the present continuous verb konuşuyoruz (we are talking) translated as the future tense (we'll talk)?
Just like in English (for example, saying "We are meeting tomorrow"), Turkish frequently uses the present continuous tense (-yor) to talk about things happening in the near future. The word sonra (later) makes it clear that the action hasn't happened yet.
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