Hi! :)
Could you explain the form "Büyüyünce"?
I can understand the rest of the Turkish sentence, besides this word.

Hi Eldad. It means "on <verb>ing...", or "when <verb>ing" or "when (I) <verb>". So büyümek -> büyü + -ince -> büyüyünce means on growing up, or when she grows up. It's a very handy suffix, it's extension "-inceye kadar" means "until". There is an explanation near the bottom of this list (search for -ince): http://www.turkishlanguage.co.uk/faq.htm

As you may already know <<Büyü.mek>> means <<to grow up>>. •Büyü-y-ünce →
-y is the blending letter here
-ünce (ince/unca/ınca depending on the vowel preceding) gives the meaning of when...

"Büyüyünce ne olmak istiyorsun?" is a very common way of asking a kid about his/her future dreams.

"What would you like to be when you grow up?"
Thank you very much, wwkudu and freefighter, for your very illuminating explanations!

wwkudu has been the fast one now. Thank you wwkudu.
@eldad of course büyüdüğünde is not the only possible translation. The very same meaning can be maintained by saying:

"Büyüdüğünde tenisçi olmak istiyor."
To me there is no difference between two.

This link:
http://www.turkishlanguage.co.uk/faq.htm
seems very interesting! Thanks, @wwkudu.

@freefighter, if I'm not mistaken, here we have -dik + inde (büyüdüğünde). Seems I'm about to learn something else now: could you explain the exact meaning of that suffix, and that of "inde"? (I haven't learned those two suffixes).

Oh, I believe that I misunderstood the suffix. I can see what it means now...
The only suffix which is relevant here is "de" (in, on). Am I right?

Büyüdüğünde should be something like: "in his being old*", i.e., when he is old.
Or: "in your being old*", i.e., when you are old.

And you cannot tell which of the two is relevant here, unless you have a clear context.

-diğinde (duğunda/diğinde/dığında - tuğunda/tiğinde/tığında)

This suffix can be broken into pieces but it gives that meaning only when it is used as a whole. But it is inflected with the change of a piece so I will show how.


•dik(ğ)-in-de => here -in is the inflecting part. So;

..diğinde-->when you/he/she/it.....
..diğinizde-->when you (plural)....
..diğimde-->when I....
..diğimizde-->when we....
..diklerinde-->when they...

>>>>
"Büyüdüğünde should be something like: "in his being old*", i.e., when he is old.
Or: "in your being old*", i.e., when you are old."

Nope, The following are %99 equivalent in meaning and perfectly interchangeable in this context.

Büyüdüğünde
Büyüyünce
Büyüdüğün zaman

Much obliged, freefighter.

So, you said that (as I thought),
..diğinde-->when you/he/she/it.....

This is why I thought that Büyüdüğünde
meant: "when you" [are old]
or "when he" [is old]
depending on the context.

Where was I wrong?

I'm sorry, at first I thought by saying "in his being old" etc. ,you were trying to differentiate the semantic difference between alternatives. Now I come to see that you were only explaining the structure of the suffix, but in English. So your last post is not wrong.

Thanks.