How do I say "when I get home" using -ince in Turkish?

Eve gelince. Gel- ("to come") ends in a consonant, so -ince attaches directly with no buffer sound. The suffix carries no person marking at all, so eve gelince on its own could mean "when I get home," "when you get home," or "when he/she gets home" - the rest of the sentence is what tells you which.

What's the difference between -ince and -diği zaman in Turkish?

Both mean roughly "when," but -ince is shorter, more common in speech, and often leans toward "as soon as" - an immediate trigger. -Diği zaman is more neutral and explicit, and it carries its own possessive ending to mark who the subject is, which -ince never does.

How do I say "when it doesn't rain" with -ince in Turkish?

Yağmur yağmayınca. The negative -ma- is inserted before the suffix, and because -ma- ends in a vowel, the buffer -y- reappears exactly as it would after any vowel-final stem, giving -mayınca rather than -mainca.

Time Clause: -ince/-ınca ("when..." / "as soon as...")

Turkish has no word that corresponds directly to “when” the way English uses it to open a time clause. One strategy for building that meaning is the longer -diği zaman pattern covered in its own lesson. A second, shorter strategy does the same job with a single suffix bolted straight onto the verb: -ince/-ınca.

What it does

-(y)Ince/-(y)Inca turns a verb into a tenseless time clause meaning “when X happens/happened” - often, though not always, with a flavor of immediacy closer to “as soon as X happens”:

Zil çalınca herkes ayağa kalktı. — When the bell rang, everyone stood up.
Sınavı bitirince dışarı çıkabilirsin. — Once you finish the exam, you can go outside.

Unlike -diği zaman, there’s no separate noun involved - no zaman (“time”) to attach to. The suffix does the whole job by itself, in one word.

Forming it

-(y)Ince/-(y)Inca follows the full four-way vowel harmony, matching the stem’s last vowel:

Last vowel of the stem	Suffix
a, ı	-ınca
e, i	-ince
o, u	-unca
ö, ü	-ünce

After a consonant-final stem, the suffix attaches directly: gel- (“to come”) gives gelince, aç- (“to open”) gives açınca. After a vowel-final stem, a buffer -y- appears so the two vowels don’t collide: oku- (“to read”) gives okuyunca, bekle- (“to wait”) gives bekleyince, anla- (“to understand”) gives anlayınca.

Ordinary consonant softening still applies exactly as it does before any other vowel-initial suffix: git- (“to go”) softens its final -t to -d before the vowel-initial -ince, giving gidince, not gitince.

Negation

The negative marker -ma/-me is inserted before the suffix, just as it is everywhere else in the verb system:

yağ- + -ma- + -yınca → yağmayınca — when it doesn’t/didn’t rain
ver- + -me- + -yince → vermeyince — when he/she doesn’t/didn’t give

Because the negative marker -ma-/-me- always ends in a vowel, the buffer -y- shows up after it exactly as it would after any other vowel-final stem - the negative form is never -mainca or -meince, always -mayınca/-meyince and their harmony-matched variants.

Exceptions worth knowing

-(y)Ince/-(y)Inca carries no person marking at all, unlike -diği zaman. There’s no possessive ending to attach and nothing optional to drop. When the clause’s subject differs from the main clause’s, it’s simply stated as a plain word in front of the verb, with no genitive marking needed: Ali gelince, biz çıktık. — When Ali arrived, we left.

It’s tenseless by itself, exactly like -diği zaman. Gelince alone doesn’t commit to past, present, or future - Eve gelince beni ara (“Call me as soon as you get home,” future) and Eve gelince yemek yaptım (“When I got home, I cooked,” past) use the identical suffix; only the main clause’s tense anchors the timing.

The “as soon as” immediacy is a tendency, not an absolute rule. -Ince/-ınca leans toward a tighter, more immediate link between the two events than -diği zaman does, and reads a touch more colloquial, but both patterns are genuinely interchangeable in plenty of ordinary sentences - don’t treat the immediacy as a hard grammatical requirement you need to double-check every time.

Examples

Kapıyı açınca içeri soğuk hava girdi. — When he/she opened the door, cold air came in.
Yorulunca dinleniriz. — When(ever) we get tired, we rest. (habitual, present)
Sınavı bitirince dışarı çıkabilirsin. — Once you finish the exam, you can go outside. (future)
Yağmur yağmayınca bahçe kurudu. — When it didn’t rain, the garden dried up. (negative)
Ali gelince, biz çıktık. — When Ali arrived, we left. (subject stated plainly, no possessive)
Zil çalınca herkes ayağa kalktı. — When the bell rang, everyone stood up.

Try it yourself

Babi, Speafy’s AI tutor, will have you swap the same sentence between -ince and -diği zaman until the shorter, snappier feel of -ince stops needing a conscious choice, and Speafy’s FSRS-based flashcards keep the “no person ending at all” rule reviewed often enough that it doesn’t quietly drift back toward the possessive pattern -diği zaman uses instead.