Lesson 2 — Questions, Places and Numbers

1A question in one small word: the particle mı

Turkish doesn’t rearrange anything to make a question. Take a statement, drop one small separate word in after whatever you’re asking about, and you’re done — the word order stays put and you don’t have to do anything clever with your voice.

It’s written as a separate word but behaves like a suffix: it takes its vowel from the last vowel of the word in front of it — the same harmony as -lar/-ler in Lesson 1. Only this time there are four teams instead of two.

You’ll meet this foursome again and again — half the endings in Turkish are built on it. Learn it here and you’ll start recognising it everywhere.

The particle goes straight after the word you’re asking about, and that’s the word the stress lands on. Move it and you’re asking about something else. Play the three in a row — the difference is audible immediately.

So far we’ve been asking about “he/she/it”. To ask “are you…?”, the personal ending from Lesson 1 simply moves onto the particle itself. And where two vowels would meet, a y slides in between — Turkish won’t let them sit side by side.

2Evet, hayır, and the word değil

Saying yes is easy: evet. Saying no is slightly more interesting. Hayır is the “no” you answer with, while the actual negating is done by a separate word, değil (roughly “deh-EEL”). It goes after whatever it’s denying, and it takes the personal ending.

A small mercy: you don’t have to repeat the whole sentence. “Hayır, değilim.” is a complete answer on its own, and a perfectly natural-sounding one.

One note for later: değil negates nouns, adjectives and numbers — which is everything we’ve had so far. Verbs handle negation differently, but verbs come later, so there’s nothing to keep track of yet.

3Where? The locative: -da / -de / -ta / -te

Turkish has no prepositions. None at all. Instead of “in”, “on” or “at”, it hangs an ending straight onto the noun — which is friendlier than it sounds. Today, the first of those endings: the one that answers nerede? — “where?”

There are four forms, chosen in two steps. The vowel follows harmony you already know: back vowels take a, front vowels take e. The consonant is the new part — if the word ends in a voiceless consonant, the d hardens into a t.

There are eight voiceless consonants, and Turkish has a lovely mnemonic for them: Fıstıkçı Şahap — “Şahap the pistachio seller”. Every consonant in that name is voiceless: f, s, t, k, ç, ş, h, p. If a word ends in one of them, use -ta or -te.

With proper names the ending goes after an apostrophe, so the name stays recognisable. You still say it as one word — the apostrophe is there for the eye only.

And to say “I’m at home” rather than just “at home”, add the personal ending you already know. The locative ends in a vowel, so the buffer y turns up again in the first person.

Two words ask about place: nerede? — “where?”, and kimde? — “who has it?”. The second one works exactly the same way; it’s just that the “place” happens to be a person.

4var and yok — there is, there isn’t

Two short words that do a whole verb’s work in Turkish. var means “there is”, yok means “there isn’t”. Both go right at the end of the sentence, and neither needs anything else to lean on.

And one trap almost everyone falls into. If the question has var in it, the answer needs one too. If the question doesn’t, the answer shouldn’t. “Kitap nerede?” is asking where the book is — not whether it exists.

5Counting in Turkish

Numbers are the one thing here you simply have to learn — but only once, because after that they slot together like bricks. No special forms, no “forty-and-seven”: you name the parts biggest first and stop.

Compound numbers are built by putting the parts side by side: on bir is literally “ten one”. Nothing goes in between.

And one detail you’ll need before the lesson is out: bir isn’t only “one” — it’s also Turkish’s “a/an”. So bir kitap is either “one book” or just “a book”, depending on what the sentence is doing.

6Getting to know each other a bit better

In Lesson 1 you said hello and gave your name. Now you can ask a little more — how old someone is, where they are, what they do. And all of it is built from exactly what you’ve read today: the question particle, the locative and the numbers.

Look closely at yaşındayım — today’s -da is hiding inside it. Word for word it’s something like “I am at twenty-five of age”. You don’t need to take the frame apart yet: learn it whole and drop your number in at the front.

The word kaç means “how many” or “how much”. It gets a section of its own next lesson; for now it’s enough to recognise it in a question about age — and about price, which you will need in about two minutes.

And a few jobs, so you’ve got something to answer with:

8Dialogue: two kilos and one negotiation

Ayşe is at the market. So, as it turns out, is Can — neither of them knows it yet. The vendor’s name is Hakan, and he is good at his job. Play the whole thing first, for the intonation, then take it line by line.

9Reading

Your second Turkish text — and again with no verb tense anywhere in it. Everything rests on personal endings, the locative, and var and yok. Exactly what you’ve just been reading about.

Listen to it whole first, without looking at the translations. Then go through it line by line. Understanding everything first time isn’t the goal — recognising the words you know already counts as a win.

10The lesson’s new words

Everything the lesson brought in, in the order it appeared. The meanings are out in the open: this isn’t a test, it’s the page you glance at when you get stuck.

11Check yourself

Six items, and you’ll see straight away what’s holding together and what deserves another listen. Missing one costs nothing — a wrong answer still shows you the right one.

12Homework

If some of this hasn’t settled yet, that’s normal — lesson two hands you three new topics at once. Go back up the page as often as you like; peeking still doesn’t count against you.