Breakdown of Komşularımız aynı apartmanda yaşıyor.
yaşamak
to live / to experience / to undergo
komşu
neighbor
aynı
same
apartman
apartment building
Questions & Answers about Komşularımız aynı apartmanda yaşıyor.
Why does apartman mean "apartment building" instead of a single apartment?
In Turkish, apartman is a "false friend" for English speakers! It actually refers to the entire apartment building. If you want to talk about a single apartment unit (a flat), you use the word daire. So apartmanda means "in the apartment building".
The verb root for "to live" is yaşa. Why is it spelled yaşıyor here?
This is due to a rule called vowel reduction. When a verb root ends in a or e and we add the present continuous ending -yor, that final vowel narrows to ı, i, u, or ü to match the preceding vowel. Here, the final a in yaşa- narrows and becomes yaşı- before -yor.
Do we need a plural suffix on yaşıyor since "neighbors" (komşularımız) is plural?
It is optional but usually left off. In Turkish, when a plural subject (especially for people) is explicitly stated in the sentence like komşularımız, the verb can just take the singular form. You could say yaşıyorlar, but yaşıyor is perfectly natural and very common.
How would we change this sentence to ask "Did our neighbors reportedly live in the same apartment building?" using this lesson's grammar?
To use the inferential past interrogative (-mış mı?), we drop the present continuous ending and add the new suffixes to the original verb root yaşa. It becomes yaşamış mı?. The full sentence would be: Komşularımız aynı apartmanda yaşamış mı? This asks if they lived there, based on hearsay or what you gathered from someone else.
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