Turkish

In Turkish we use the word şey often, and in many situations.



	Şey literally means thing.
	However in Turkish Şey can replace almost anything.
	And this is not an exaggeration; şey can replace: whole sentences, clauses, subjects, objects, whole words, parts of words, etc.



	Şey is used when something is eluding you when you're trying to say something.
	For example, imagine that last night you watched a documentary about dik-diks (incredibly cute animals, look it up).
	And today you're at work, you want to tell your co-worker about this new animal that you learned about last night.
	But you just can't remember the name of the animal.
	It is as if it escaped from your mind.
	It would go something like this in Turkish:



	"Dün akşam bir belgesel izledim şeyler hakkında. Neydi ya? Böyle ufak sevimli savanda yaşayan şeyler... Heh dikdikler!



	Last night, I watched a documentary about the thingies... What was it?
	They're like, little cute, living-in-the-savannah thingies... Ah, dik-diks!



	In the case above, şey replaces a noun. Now let's see an example for a verb:


<table class="ui celled table">
 <tbody>
 <tr data-item="28584"></tr>
		<tr data-item="217062"></tr>
 </tbody>
</table>


	As you can see, when used with a verb, it takes the auxiliary verb yapmak in order to be conjugated.
	You cannot say şeyiyor or şeyecek, so you need an auxiliary verb to do that.



	Here's an example for replacing a clause:


<table class="ui celled table">
 <tbody>
 <tr data-item="28586"></tr>
		 <tr>
			<td>Ceren'le beraber gittiğimiz tatilden beri görüşmedik.</td>
 <td>We haven't met up with Ceren since the vacation we went on together.</td>
 </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>


	Here, şey replaces the whole going on vacation together.
	Move onto practice to see more examples and strengthen your understanding.

Şey: the single most important word in Turkish

noun

adjective

determiner

verb

adverb

postposition

interjection

conjunction

pronoun

sentence

phrase

Unknown

NOUN - vowel harmony, consonant harmony

NOUN - vowel harmony, no consonant harmony

NOUN - no vowel harmony, consonant harmony

NOUN - no vowel harmony, no consonant harmony

VERB - intransitive, passive

VERB - intransitive, non-passive

VERB - transitive, non-causative

VERB - transitive, causative

VERB - ablative

VERB - dative

VERB - locative

VERB - accusative

VERB - intransitive, reciprocal

VERB - intransitive, reflexive

VERB - auxiliary

Word	Çöpü şey yaptın mı?
Meaning	[Lit.] Did you thing'd the trash?
Part of speech	sentence
Pronunciation
Course	Turkish
Lesson	Şey: the single most important word in Turkish

Çöpü şey yaptın mı?

Breakdown of Çöpü şey yaptın mı?

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thing	şey
to do; to make	yapmak
trash, rubbish, garbage	çöp