Breakdown of Tatilinin ona zehrolduğunu herkes biliyordu.
o
that / he / she / it
bilmek
to know
tatil
holiday / vacation
herkes
everyone
Questions & Answers about Tatilinin ona zehrolduğunu herkes biliyordu.
Why is zehrolduğunu written as one word, and what happened to the second "i" in zehir?
When certain two-syllable nouns like zehir (poison) combine with auxiliary verbs like olmak or etmek, they lose the vowel in their second syllable (vowel elision). According to Turkish orthographic rules, if a sound change like this vowel drop occurs, the noun and the auxiliary verb must be written together as one word: zehrolmak.
Why does tatil take the genitive suffix -in in tatilinin?
Let's break it down: tatil-i-n-in (holiday - his - buffer - genitive). The word takes the genitive case because it is the subject of an embedded clause. In Turkish, when you create a "that" clause using a -dık participle (like zehrolduğunu), the subject of that action must be in the genitive case.
Can you break down the suffixes at the end of zehrolduğunu?
Sure! After the verb stem zehrol-, we add the object participle -duk (which softens to -duğ-) and the 3rd person possessive -u to mean "the fact that it became poison." Finally, we add the buffer -n- and the accusative suffix -u. The accusative is required because the entire embedded clause is the direct object of the main verb biliyordu (everyone knew what?).
Why do we use ona (to him) instead of (for him) in this sentence?