Since… -DAn beri and For.. DIr in Turkish

I am going to explain to you how you can say or write sentences like “I play football since high school or I live in San Francisco since 2019”.

We will also learn for how long we have been doing something in Turkish.

Let us start by learning few things about “Since”. (since it is important 😎)

Turkish is all about suffix. The suffix for (ever) since is -DAn beri, where

• D → d or t
• A → a or e

It expresses the duration of time that passed after a specific event or point in time.

This suffix is used to explain the ⏱️time related since not the 🧠 reason related since in English.

There is another suffix for that which we will learn later.

Examples

Üç aydan beri Türkçe öğreniyorum.

• I am learning Turkish since three months.

Amerika’da iki yıldan beri yaşıyorum.

• I am living in America since two years.

Dört yaşımdan beri okula gidiyorum.

• I go to school since I was four years old.

Yağmur sabahtan beri yağıyorç

• It is raining since morning.

Covid geldikten beri dünya çok değişti.

• The world changed drastically since Covid.

Naval Ravikant’a rastladıktan beri düşüncelerim değişti.

• My thinking has changed ever since I came across Naval Ravikant.

Now let us see For as in I have been waiting for this for years.

The suffix is -DIr where

• D → d or t
• I → i, ı, u, or ü

They are added to adverbs of time like

• haftalardır (for weeks)
• aylardır (for months)
• yıllardır (for years)
• X saattir¹ (for X hour(s))
• Y dakikadır (for Y minute(s))

Examples

Kopek iki gündür kayıp.

• The dog is missing for two days.

Arkadaşım birkaç haftadır tatil planı yapıyor.

• My friend is making holiday plans for few weeks.

Müzik grubu konser için birkaç aydır prova yapıyor.

• The music band is rehearsing for few months for the concert.

Gül festivalı iki haftadır devam ediyor.

• The rose festival is going on for two weeks.

Çocuklar oyuncağını beş saattir arıyor.

• The kids are looking for their toy for five hours.

Written by

Abbas Abdelila

@abbasabdelila