Now we're going to talk about the dative case in Turkish. The dative case is a set of
endings which you add to a noun, or pronoun in Turkish
which is the indirect object of a sentence what's an indirect object? Let's look at the example sentence
"Leyla gives the book to Jon"
so in Turkish, "Leya kitabı John'a veriyor" or
John, to John, is the indirect object and therefore receives the dative case ending
one of the most common uses of the dative case in Turkish is as the equivalent of one of the English prepositions, to
towards, into, or for. So in the case of our example
sentence Leyla gives the book *to* John "John'a": John in the dative
Let's see how we're going to form the dative
the dative case ending follows the rules of two-way vowel harmony
so we have two alternative vowels we can use depending on the
quality of the final vowel in the word we're attaching it to
Let's start with the Turkish word for house, "ev"
if we want to say "to the house" or "towards the house"
We're going to add the appropriate dative case ending. Because of the rules of two-way vowel harmony for "ev"
we're going to add -e"
"eve": to the house
Let's look at the Turkish word for school, "okul"
If we want to say "to the school" or "towards the school" we're going to again choose the appropriate
version of the dative case ending according to the rules of two-way vowel harmony, so for "okul"
we're going to choose "-a" , "okula"
"To the school" or "toward the school"
What if the noun or pronoun we want to add the dative case ending to ends in a vowel
so for example the Turkish word for University, "üniversite"
ends in a vowel
We know that Turkish does not like to see two vowels next to each other. Vowel harmony tells us that for
"üniversite" we're going to choose
the "-e" version of the dative case ending so "üniversite..e"
But because Turkish does not like to see those two vowels next to each other we're going to add a buffer "y"
"üniversiteye": to the university or towards the university
It is also possible to add the dative case ending to a proper noun like the name of a city or the name of the person
So for example if we want to say "to Ankara, to the city of Ankara"
"Ankara..."
Well vowel, harmony tells us we're going to choose "-a"
And since we know Turkish doesn't like to see these two vowels next to each other we're going to use this in buffer "y"
"Ankara'ya," because Ankara is a proper noun though, we're going to need to remember to include an
apostrophe between
The noun and the dative case ending so "Ankara'ya"
This is the same thing we're going to do for a proper noun that someone's name so we're giving something to
"Şengül"
We're again going to add an apostrophe
before adding the appropriate version of the dative case ending in this case for "Şengül" , "-e"
"Şengül'e": to Şengül, towards Şengül
Now we can also add the dative case ending after the plural suffix in Turkish
So here we had "to the house" if we want to say "to the houses" or "toward the houses"
Start with the Turkish word for house, then add the appropriate version of the plural suffix so
"evler": houses
and then add the dative case ending so "to the houses" or "towards the houses" is going to be "evlere"
We can also add the dative case ending after a plural suffix, excuse me, not a plural suffix, a possessive suffix
so if we want to say
"Towards my house" we'll start with again with the Turkish word for house, "ev"
Then add the possessive suffix , "-im" , "evim": my house
to say "to my house" we'll simply add
The appropriate version of the dative case ending after our possessive suffix so to my house is
"Evime"
"Evime": to my house