Asking simple questions in Turkish
We have learnt how to build simple sentences in Turkish, vowel harmony, personal pronouns and choosing appropriate personal suffixes in previous Turkish grammar lessons. If you studied the mentioned lessons, asking simple questions in Turkish will be very easy grammar lesson for you.
In this lesson, you will learn how to ask questions with third singular person “O – He/She/It”
To build sentences in Turkish with to be verb, we add personal suffixes to the end of our sentences. To ask question, we also add suffixes. It is ” mı, mi, mu, mü”. The one you choose is also related with the vowel harmony and you will need to look at the last vowel of the word before the question suffix.
Everything will be explained step by step for third singular person and it will help you for the others.
Lets have a look at the examples below before we start to go into details.
| Öğretmen Türk müdür? | Is teacher Turkish? |
| O yorgun mudur? | Is he/she tired? |
| Emre öğrenci midir? | Is Emre student? |
| O bir ağaç mıdır? | Is ıt a tree? |
From the above examples you can see that to build simple question with to be verb in Turkish, it is used “mi, mu, mü, mı” suffixes.
Vowels are written in red shows the last vowel of the word before the question suffix. Shortly, every suffix you add must be appropriate with vowel harmony.
| if Last vowel | Question suffix |
|---|---|
| ö – ü | mü |
| a – ı | mı |
| e – i | mi |
| o – u | mu |
You ask now where to put the suffixes possibly into sentence. It is easier to explain it, if we create sentence together. Let’s try to say “Is dog dangerous ?” in Turkish. This is also an another example of how to make sentences in Turkish and word order.
- Köpek = Dog , Tehlikeli = Dangerous
- We start building sentence with object. Our object is “Tehlikeli : Dangerous”
Tehlikeli (Dangerous)
3. Sentence needs a personal pronoun and we can learn it by asking “Kim: who or Ne: what ” to the object. Who is dangerous? our answer is “köpek : Dog”. Subject comes to the beginning of the sentence.
Köpek tehlikeli (Dog dangerous)
4) Now Sentence needs related personal suffix. Because it is third singual person (O – he/She/It), Personal suffix must be one of “dır, dir, dur, dür” That means we need to follow the rules of vowel harmony. Previous lessons vowel harmony are explained or you can check the table above.
Personal suffixes comes to the end of sentence. Last vowel of the word is “Tehlikeli ” and appropriate suffix is “-dir”. Our positive sentence is like below now.
Köpek tehlikelidir. (Dog is dangerous.)
5) Positive sentences can be turn into questions very easily. You just need to add question suffixes “mu, mü, mı , mi” after the word and before the personal pronoun. To choose the right one follow the vowel harmony again.
Köpek tehlikeli midir? (Is dog dangerous?)
* Make a space before the “mu, mü ,mı, mi” in question sentences in Turkish.
I hope it was easy and explaining for you. There is an easy exercises for you related with topic. Please solve it and study your mistakes from the notes.
Exercises
[qsm quiz=22]
For support and learning Turkish easily with colorful pages, you can buy the book for Turkish for beginners from the shop.
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