Learn Turkish: Keşke yorulasıya kadar koşmak yerine biraz dinlenseymiş. - I hear he wishes he had rested a bit instead of running until he was exhausted.

Keşke yorulasıya kadar koşmak yerine biraz dinlenseymiş.

I hear he wishes he had rested a bit instead of running until he was exhausted.

Breakdown of Keşke yorulasıya kadar koşmak yerine biraz dinlenseymiş.

Questions & Answers about Keşke yorulasıya kadar koşmak yerine biraz dinlenseymiş.

How does dinlenseymiş translate to "I hear he wishes he had rested"?

This combines the verb dinlen (rest) with the wish/conditional suffix -se and the reported suffix -(y)miş. While dinlense means "if he rests" or "I wish he would rest", adding -(y)miş shows you are reporting a wish or regret you just heard about. Combined with keşke (if only / I wish), it forms a reported wish: "Apparently, he wishes he had rested" or "I hear he should have rested."

Could I use dinlenseydi instead of dinlenseymiş in this sentence?

Yes, but it changes the speaker's perspective. dinlenseydi uses the definite past (-di) to mean "If only he had rested"—making it your own direct feeling of regret for him. By using -(y)miş to make dinlenseymiş, you distance yourself from the statement, showing that it's his own regret that was reported to you.

Why is it yorulasıya kadar instead of the more common yorulana kadar?

Both mean "until he got tired", but the -(y)asıya kadar structure emphasizes the extreme intensity or extent of an action. While -(y)ana kadar marks a simple time boundary, -(y)asıya kadar translates closer to "to the point of". Here, it means he ran to the point of total exhaustion.

How is "instead of running" formed grammatically here?