To - Yönelme Hal Eki

When trying to understanding the dynamics of Turkish one thing that is peculiar is how suffixes come between words to relate or bind them just like mortar is for bricks.

When ever there is a direction is involved as in going to some where, or the flow action from one to another. We have the suffixes -A.

⚠️ One thing to pay attention to is if the last letter is a or e. In general no two vowels come next to each other in Turkish so we have to add a mediator y in between.

car → araba

…to the car → araba + a = arabaa ❌

…to the car → araba + a = arabaya ✅

Let us see some more examples

…to school → okula

…to the cinema → sinemaya

…to the park → parka

…to America → Amerika’ya ( We separate with apostrophe for proper names )

…to Kenya → Kenya’ya

…to Library → Kütüphane’ye

Let use it in a sentence

Ben okula gidiyorum ⇒ I go to school.

Sen sinemaya gidiyorsun ⇒ You go to the cinema.

O parka gidiyor ⇒ He/She goes to the park.

Biz Amerika’ya gidiyoruz ⇒ We go to America.

Siz Kenya’ya gidiyorsunuz ⇒ You go to Kenya.

Onlar Kütüphane’ye gidiyorlar ⇒ They go to the library.

Don’t worry about the verb used in above and why it has different endings. Focus on how the suffix a and e are used to express the direction or flow of action is.

This is one of the most important suffixes in the Turkish language and powerful in expressing things when used in combination with other words.

Thanks for reading!

Written by

Abbas Abdelila

@abbasabdelila