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Adamın cevabı bana çok muğlak gibi geldi.

Adamın cevabı bana çok muğlak gibi geldi.
The man's answer seemed very ambiguous to me.
From Lesson 475:Sensory impressions (gibi gelmek)·Turkish

Questions & Answers about Adamın cevabı bana çok muğlak gibi geldi.

How does gibi geldi combine with bana to express an impression?
The word gibi means 'like' and geldi is the past tense of 'to come'. When paired with a dative pronoun like bana (to me), the phrase bana ... gibi geldi literally translates to 'it came to me like...'. This is the standard Turkish structure for expressing 'it seemed to me' or 'I got the impression that'.
Can I drop gibi and just say bana çok muğlak geldi?
Yes, absolutely. Saying bana çok muğlak geldi means exactly the same thing and is perfectly grammatical. Including gibi just softens the statement slightly, making it feel a bit more hesitant, similar to saying 'it seemed sort of ambiguous to me' instead of a hard factual statement.
Why is bana placed before çok muğlak instead of right next to the verb?
In Turkish, the information directly preceding the verb carries the most emphasis. By placing bana earlier in the sentence, the speaker keeps the focus on the descriptive phrase çok muğlak (very ambiguous). The impression itself is more important than the fact that it happened to 'me'.
Is the word muğlak common in everyday Turkish?
Muğlak is a slightly formal word meaning 'ambiguous' or 'vague'. While you will definitely hear it in news, business, or intellectual discussions, native speakers in highly casual settings might opt for simpler alternatives like belirsiz (unclear) or just say net değil (it is not clear).
As a quick refresher, why does cevap change to cevabı here?
This happens because of the definite noun compound adamın cevabı (the man's answer). The word cevap (answer) takes the third-person possessive suffix -ı. When a suffix starting with a vowel is added, the hard consonant p undergoes consonant mutation and softens into a b.

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