Learn Turkish: Denedik, ne var ki hepsi zaman kaybıydı. - We tried, but it was all a waste of time.

While ama just means "but", ne var ki is a bit more formal and carries the weight of "however" or "nevertheless". It specifically introduces a contrastive reservation, acknowledging the initial effort (denedik) but emphasizing the disappointing reality that followed.

Can you break down the suffix changes happening in the word kaybıydı?

The root word is kayıp (loss). To say "waste of time" (literally "time loss"), it forms a noun compound: zaman kaybı. Adding the possessive suffix -ı to kayıp causes the second vowel to drop and the p to soften to b (kaybı). Finally, the past tense copula -dı is attached with a buffer y, making it kaybıydı (it was a loss).

Hepsi means "all of them" or "all of it". Why isn't a plural suffix used on the predicate at the end of the sentence?

In Turkish, when the subject is a collective pronoun like hepsi, or a non-human plural, the verb or predicate must remain singular. Conjugating the end of the sentence as plural (kaybıydılar) would sound unnatural here.

Do native speakers pause between the words in ne var ki?

Even though it is written as three separate words, native speakers typically pronounce it smoothly as a single unit, almost like "nevarki". You will usually see a comma placed right before it to separate the two independent clauses it connects.