When we learn a new language after learning English, we tend to compare, which is quite normal. However, it might slow down your learning. I often see this tendency among my students. This has both a good side and a bad side. In this article, I’ll talk about “If” grammar and how comparison doesn’t work.
In English, adding just “if” to a given sentence makes it conditional, that’s it! Easy, peasy:)
That’s why it’s tempting to try doing the same in Turkish, using a similar word, but which does NOT function the same, do you know what it is?
Yes, it’s EĞER. So many Turkish learners do the same mistake about this word. For example, they want to say;
“If you want to watch a movie, let’s go to the cinema.”
They translate this sentence like this :
“Eğer film seyretmek istiyorsun, haydi sinemaya gidelim.”
Adding only eğer which is not enough, and the right version of this sentence is :
“Eğer film seyretmek istiyorsan, haydi sinemaya gidelim.”
Or
“Film seyretmek istiyorsan, haydi sinemaya gidelim.”
As you see If I remove “eğer” from the sentence, it doesn’t lose it’s meaning because “eğer” is just an emphasizing/ optional word. Most important part of the conditional sentence is “-sa/ -se” suffixes.