Learn Turkish: Şimdi aklıma geldi! - It just came to my mind!

Şimdi usually means "now". However, when you use it with a past tense verb like geldi (came), it translates closer to "just now" or "just". The sentence literally means "It came to my mind just now!"

I learned that the word for "mind" is "akıl". Why is it spelled "akl-" in "aklıma"?

This happens because of a Turkish pronunciation rule called vowel dropping. When certain two-syllable nouns like akıl get a suffix starting with a vowel, the second vowel of the root word drops out to make it smoother to say. So, akıl + -ım (my) becomes aklım, rather than "akılım".

How does the word "aklıma" break down into suffixes?

It combines the modified root word with two different suffixes. First, we have aklım (my mind). Then, we add the dative case suffix -a (to/towards). Put together, aklım + -a makes aklıma (to my mind).

Where is the word for "it" in this sentence?

In Turkish, the subject is often built right into the verb. The verb geldi (came) has no specific person ending added after the past tense suffix -di. A blank ending indicates the third person singular (he, she, or it). The "it" is simply understood from the verb itself!