Turkish Verb To Be in Simple Present

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Watch this lesson to learn the Turkish Verb To Be in Simple Present Tense. Be sure to download the Course PDF and follow along with all the lessons.

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Turkish – Present To Be

When we want to make a To Be sentence in English, the sentence will start with a personal pronoun like “I, You, He, She, etc.”, then we would need to add a to be verb “am/is/are” and finally add the noun or adjective to the end of the sentence.

If we want to make a To Be sentence in Turkish, the order and the usage of some words differ. The verb “to be” doesn’t actually exist in Turkish. The sentence first starts with a personal pronoun like “ben, sen, o, etc.”, then the noun or adjective is added, but at the end of the noun or adjective we use the personal suffix associated with our personal pronoun (which makes it similar to a To Be Verb).

Here are the Personal Pronouns in Turkish:

English	Turkish
I	Ben
You	Sen
He / She / It	O
We	Biz
You (Plural / Polite)	Siz
They	Onlar

Turkish doesn’t have a gender-specific personal pronoun like “He/She” in English. The pronoun “O” is used for both male, female, animals, and objects.

While the pronoun “Sen” is the second person singular, the pronoun “Siz” is the second person plural for the English pronoun “You”. “Siz” is also used in polite/formal speech.

Just a quick note, if you haven’t watched or skipped “Day 2 – Vowel Harmony & Consonant Mutation”, I would advise that you look at it again before continuing this lecture because we will use our knowledge from that lesson in a moment.

Let’s first try to make a positive sentence. Look at the example sentence below and see how a statement (Present – To Be) sentence is made in Turkish:

• Ben bir doktorum.
• I am a doctor

Ben	bir	doktor	um
Personal Pronoun	Indefinite Article “a”	Noun/ Adjective	Person Suffix

Each personal suffix that is associated with the personal pronoun has a different spelling. In order to choose the correct form for the personal suffix, we look at the last vowel of the noun or adjective inside the sentence.

Look at the chart to see which options you have for suffixes:

	a/ı	e/i	o/u	ö/ü
Ben	-(y)ım	-(y)im	-(y)um	-(y)üm
Sen	-sın	-sin	-sun	-sün
O	-(dır)	-(dir)	-(dur)	-(dür)
Biz	-(y)ız	-(y)iz	-(y)uz	-(y)üz
Siz	-sınız	-siniz	-sunuz	-sünüz
Onlar	-(dır)lar	-(dir)ler	-(dur)lar	-(dür)ler

Let’s go back to our earlier example. The reason we chose the suffix “um” for the noun “doktor” is that we first look at which personal pronoun we used and later look at the last vowel of the noun, which is “o”. The suffix associated with the “o” vowel sound for the “Ben” personal pronoun is the “- (y)um” suffix.

For the personal suffix of the “Onlar” personal pronoun, you can either use as “-dırlar/-dirlar” or simply as “-ler/-lar”.

If the noun or the adjective ends in a consonant sound, we don’t add the “-(y)” consonant sound, otherwise, we would have added as “-yum” instead of “-um”. Here are some more examples. Look at the personal pronoun and the personal suffix carefully:

• O bir doktordur.
• He/She is a doctor.

• Biz öğrenciyiz.
• We are students.

• Onlar güzeller.
• They are beautiful.

• Sen mutlusun.
• You are happy.

Negative – Present To Be

If you want to make negative statement (To Be) sentences, you need to add the negation “değil” meaning “not”, right after the noun or the adjective. In negative sentences, the personal suffix is not added after the noun or the adjective but after the negation “değil”.

• Ben bir doktor değilim.
• I am not a doctor.

Ben	bir	doktor	değil	im
Personal pronoun	Indefinite Article “a”	Noun / Adjective	Negative (Not)	Person Suffix

Because we add the personal suffix right after the “değil”, the vowel harmony is only limited to one choice for each personal pronoun:

Personal Pronoun	Negative + Person Suffix
Ben	değilim
Sen	değilsin
O	değil(dir)
Biz	değiliz
Siz	değilsiniz
Onlar	değiller

Here are some more examples. Look at the personal pronoun and the personal suffix carefully:

• Ben bir öğretmen değilim.
• I am not a teacher.

• O güzel değil(dir)
• She is not pretty.

• Sen hasta değilsin
• You are not sick.

• Onlar öğrenci değiller
• They are not students.

For the “O” personal pronoun, it is possible to use just the negative word “değil” and no person suffix.

Positive Questions

Making positive statement questions requires you to add the question word “-mı/-mu/etc” variation to the end of the noun or the adjective. Instead of adding the personal suffix to the end of the noun or the adjective, we add it to the end of the question word with respect to vowel harmony for both the question and the personal suffix:

• Ben bir avukat mıyım?
• Am I a lawyer?

Ben	bir	avukat	mıyım?
Personal pronoun	Indefinite Article “a”	Noun / Adjective	Question Word + Person Suffix

Look at the chart to see more examples for conjugation of the suffix after the question word:

	a/ı	e/i	o/u	ö/ü
Ben	-mıyım	-miyim	-muyum	-müyüm
Sen	-mısın	-misin	-musun	-müsün
O	-mı	-mi	-mu	-mü
Biz	-mıyız	-miyiz	-muyuz	-müyüz
Siz	-mısınız	-misiniz	-musunuz	-müsünüz
Onlar	-mı	-mi	-mu	-mü

In some resources, the personal suffix for the “O” personal pronoun as “-mıdır/-midir/etc” but it actually sounds unnatural in Spoken Turkish so I would advise you avoid it.

Here are some more examples. Look at the personal pronoun, the vowel harmony for the question word and the personal suffix closely:

• Onlar öğrenci mi?
• Are they students?

• Sen mutlu musun?
• Are you happy?

• O heyecanlı mı?
• Is he excited?

• Onlar polis mi?
• Are they police?

Negative Questions

The last section of this lessons is about making negative statement questions. You can ask negative statement questions to someone to confirm an information that was previously answered or asked.

When making negative questions, you combine the “değil” (not) with the question word “-mı/- mi/ etc”. Like positive questions, we add the personal suffix at the end of the question word.

• Sen bir doktor değil misin?
• Aren’t you a doctor?

Sen	bir	doktor	değil	misin?
Personal pronoun	Indefinite Article “a”	Noun / Adjective	Not	Q. Word + Person Suffix

Look at the chart to see more examples for conjugation of the suffix after the question word:

	Negation + Q. Word + P. Suffix
Ben	değil miyim
Sen	değil misin
O	değil mi
Biz	değil miyiz
Siz	değil misiniz
Onlar	değil mi

You might have noticed that this chart resembles to the negative statement sentences we learned earlier. Because the negation stays the same, there is only one way to conjugate the personal suffix after the “Not” word.

Let’s see some more examples:

• Sen mutlu değil misin?
• Aren’t you happy?

• Siz Ahmet değil misiniz?
• Aren’t you Ahmet?

• Biz İngiliz değil miyiz?
• Aren’t we British?

• Onlar öğrenci değil mi?
• Aren’t they students?

You now know how to make statement sentences and their questions in Turkish. Isn’t it nice?

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