Turkish/Asking Questions

Don't worry about the length of the lesson this time. Unlike last lesson, this will just be a short, basic grammar lesson teaching you how to form questions in Turkish.

Question words
Before we can start asking questions, let's learn some question words:


 * Ne? - What?
 * Nerede? - Where?
 * Nereden? - From where?
 * Nereye? - To where?
 * Ne zaman? - When?
 * Neden?/Niye? - Why?
 * Hangi? - Which?
 * Hangisi? - Which one?
 * Kim? - Who?
 * Kimin? - Whose (is it)?
 * Kime? - To whom?
 * Nasıl? - How?
 * Ne kadar? - How much?/How many?
 * Ne kadar zaman kaldı? - How long left?

Incorporation
Let's try and incorporate these words into sentences.


 * Senin adın ne? - What is your name?
 * Kumanda nerede? - Where's the remote?
 * Nereden geldin? - Where did you come from?
 * Nereye gidiyorsun? - Where are you going (to)?
 * O evden ne zaman çıktı? - When did he leave the house?
 * Sen neden/niye kurabiyeyi kurabiye kavanozundan çaldın? - Why did you steal the cookie from the cookie jar?
 * Bugün hangi elbiseyi giyineceğim? - Which dress am I going to wear today?
 * Hangisi senin? - Which one is yours?
 * O kim? - Who is that?
 * O kimin? - Whose is that?
 * O hediyeyi kime gönderiyorsun? - Who are you sending that present to?
 * Onu nasıl göndereceksin? - How are you going to send it?
 * O ne kadardı? - How much was it?
 * Evden çıktığına kadar ne kadar zaman kaldı? - How long left until you leave the house?

Some of these examples are of the perfect (past) tense. We'll touch on those later.

Conditional questions
In other words, a question which could be answered either with a positive or a negative response (e.g. Did you go shopping yesterday?).

In Turkish, it's a little different.

Let's use the verb gitmek-to go as an example for this demonstration.

Sen gidiyorsun is you're going.

All you do to make it are you going? is this:

You add a -mı-, a -mi-, a -mü- or a -mu- in between the -yor- and the suffix (-yum, -sun, etc.), depending on the vowel harmony, as so:

Sen gidiyor musun? - Are you going?

However, it's different with some other people. Let's conjugate it fully:

As you can see, the pattern applies to almost all cases, except for he/she, because it doesn't have a suffix. Therefore, all we do is add a mı, mi or mu afterwards, but as a separate word.

Now that we've covered all of this, let's continue to the next lesson. We'll learn more about questions later on.