Breakdown of Sabahtan akşama kadar ders çalışıyoruz.
çalışmak
to work / to study
ders
lesson, class
akşam
evening
sabah
morning
Questions & Answers about Sabahtan akşama kadar ders çalışıyoruz.
Why is it sabahtan and not sabahdan for "from morning"?
The Turkish suffix for "from" is usually -dan or -den. However, sabah ends with a hard, unvoiced consonant (the letter "h"). When you add a suffix starting with "d" to a word ending in a hard consonant, the "d" changes to a "t" to make it easier to pronounce. This makes it sabahtan.
How do you build the "from morning till evening" phrase in Turkish?
Turkish uses a specific pattern for "from X until Y". You put the "from" suffix on the first word (sabahtan) and the "to" suffix on the second word (akşama), followed by kadar (until). So the whole structure is literally "from morning, to evening until".
Doesn't çalışıyoruz mean "we work"? Why do we need the word ders?
The verb çalışmak on its own usually means "to work" (like at a job or doing physical labor). When you want to say "to study" in the academic sense, you use the set phrase ders çalışmak, which literally translates to "working a lesson".
Why is there an ı in the middle of çalışıyoruz?
The verb root is çalış and the present continuous suffix (meaning "-ing") is -yor. Because çalış ends in a consonant and -yor starts with one, you need a helper vowel to connect them. Following Turkish vowel harmony rules, the connecting vowel becomes ı, creating çalışıyoruz.