kitap okudum

[𐎀𐎐𐎒𐎚𐎒𐎊 𐎎𐎐𐎇𐎋𐎆]

Merhaba

Does "kitap okudum" mean "I read a book." or "I read books."?

Thank you

 

[misi2991]

It depends. By the way let me point this out: one doesn't normally say "kitaplar okudum" in Turkish. If you read many books, you should say "birçok kitap okudum". "Kitap okudum" means "kitap okuma eylemini gerçekleştirdim" (=I did some book reading).

 

[Ali Smith]

It depends. By the way let me point this out: one doesn't normally say "kitaplar okudum" in Turkish. If you read many books, you should say "birçok kitap okudum". "Kitap okudum" means "kitap okuma eylemini gerçekleştirdim" (=I did some book reading).

How can Kitap okudum. mean “I read books.” when the word kitap is singular? Wouldn’t that require the plural marker?

 

[misi2991]

How can Kitap okudum. mean “I read books.” when the word kitap is singular? Wouldn’t that require the plural marker?

Consider the following context:

A: Yaz tatilinde ne yaptın? (=What did you do during summer break?)
B: Kitap okudum. (=I read books.)

In this context, it's not clear whether person B read one book or more than one book. If person B wants to indicate how many he/she read, he/she should say something like "birçok kitap okudum" (=I read many books) or "birkaç kitap okudum" (=I read a few books).

When you translate "I read books" into Turkish word by word, you get "kitaplar okudum". You could use it in the above context, but that's not something a native speaker of Turkish would normally say as it needs -not grammatically but intuitively- an adjective.

 

[Rallino]

Think of kitap okudum as I did book-reading. It doesn't tell you if you read one or multiple books. If it's necessary, you can specify: Bir kitap okudum (I read a book) or Birkaç kitap okudum (I read some books).

 

[Ali Smith]

That makes sense. Similarly, Mektup yazdım does not specify how many letters you wrote. All we can be sure is you wrote at least one letter.