Breakdown of Maça gidemedik, en azından evde pizza yiyelim.
ev
house
yemek
to eat
gitmek
to go
maç
match / game (sports)
en azından
at least (quantitatively)
pizza
pizza
Questions & Answers about Maça gidemedik, en azından evde pizza yiyelim.
Could I swap en azından with bari or hiç olmazsa in this sentence?
Yes, absolutely. In this context, they all serve the exact same purpose: introducing a minimum acceptable consolation prize because the main plan (going to the match) failed. You could just as easily say Maça gidemedik, bari evde pizza yiyelim or Maça gidemedik, hiç olmazsa evde pizza yiyelim.
What is the literal breakdown of en azından? It looks like it has an ablative (from) ending.
You spotted it! It breaks down as en (the most) + az (little/few) + ın (compound marker/buffer) + dan (from). Literally, it translates to something like "from its least." Today, it just functions as a fixed, everyday phrase for "at least."
I often mix up "didn't go" and "couldn't go." Where exactly is the "couldn't" in gidemedik?
The "couldn't" is hidden in the single letter e right before the negative marker. The base is gitmek (to go). If it were just standard negative, it would be gitmedik (we didn't go). Adding the impotential/inability marker -e- (which softens the t to a d) gives us gidemedik (we couldn't go).
Why does the verb yiyelim (let's eat) start with yiy- when the verb root is ye-?
This is a classic case of vowel narrowing. The suffix for "let's" (first-person plural optative) is -elim. Because the root ye- ends in a vowel, we need the buffer -y-, creating yeyelim. However, the Turkish verb roots ye- (to eat) and de- (to say) almost always narrow their e to an i when followed by a y, resulting in yiyelim.
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