Neden - Why, Ne/Neyi - What

"Neden"

It means "why" and it is the ablative (from) form of the word "ne"-what 

So when we ask 'Why?' we are questioning 'from where' the cause is coming. 

There are two other words that we can use over 'neden'.

• niye
• niçin

And 'niçin' comes from these two words; ne için - what for

So if you see niye, niçin, neden you can be 100% confident that they all mean the same-which is Why?

***But there is one word that sometimes make the learners confused which is

"Neyi"         (This word reminds me yine-again and yeni-new somehow)

Neyi is the accusative form of the word Ne

Let's read some examples;

- Neyi beğenmedin? What haven't you liked?

 - Bu arabayı beğenmedim. I did not like this car.

***There are some verbs that requires to add accusative suffix ı/i to the objects in the sentence. And beğenmek is one of them. And there are some verbs that is okay to use with or without this suffix- when you use it works like "the" in English, when you don't add, it means the object is not certain.

Çocuğu gördüm. I saw the kid.

(Bir) Çocuk gördüm. I saw a kid. ---> either you say bir or not the sentence means the same. 

***When a word ends with a vowel (a e ı i o ö u ü) we need to add "y" also.

And if this object is a genitive noun phrase and ends with a vowel at the same time, then we add "n" instead of "n"

for example; 

araba: car

benim arabam: my car

babanın arabası: your father's car

- Benim arabamı gördün mü? Did you see my car?

  - Neyi gördüm mü? If I saw what?

- Benim arabamı, buraya park etmiştim ama yanlış hatırlıyorum galiba. My car, I had parked it here but I guess I remember it wrong.

  - Babanın arabasını aldığın zaman hep böyle panik yapıyorsun. You are making panic like this when you take your father's car.

- Ne/Neyi görmek istiyorsun? What do you want to see?

 - Önce kaleyi, sonra mağazaları. First the castle, then the stores.

*As the castle is the one in that city, it is not any castle; a certain one, even if we ask this question saying 'Ne.. ' we need to answer it using our suffix-kaleyi.

***So what we need to do to avoid making mistakes?***

When you learn a new verb, you can have a look at what case / what suffixes you may need to use with it.

Just like you listen to the pronunciation of a new word you learn. And if you make a mistake and use the case wrong or if you don't use it all, it is really not the end of the world. You can be sure that everyone will understand you!  "Mistakes are meant to be ours, they are for us, we human beings" aren't they? 

This accusative case is one of the hardest subjects when learning Turkish. The other cases are more clear and easier to choose the right one.

for example;

to -e/-a

Türkiye'ye - to Turkey

İsveç'e - to Sweden

in -de/da

Ankara'da - in Ankara

Mısır'da - in Egypt

But the key for the accusative is "you need to look at if your object is defined or not", just like the example with the kid above.