Lessons · 6 of 18

Asking questions

One more small syllable turns any statement into a question — the art is knowing where it goes.

One small syllable turns any statement into a question: mı — or mi, mu, mü, its vowel matching as always. No change of word order, no helper like English "do". The particle simply joins the verb. The only thing to learn is where, and there are two answers.

Inside the verb — before the person ending

In the present, and in the tenses built on the participles you know — the perfect's barğan and the firm future's barlık — the particle slips in just before the person ending:

• baramısa? — are you going?
• barğanmıdı? — has he gone?
• barlıkmısız? — are you all going to go?

A line of poetry preserves the pattern for us: bilemisiz? — "do you know?" — the particle sitting exactly where the negative ma of lesson 5 would sit.

After the verb — the simple past

The simple past finishes its whole word first — tense, then person ending — and only then takes the particle, written attached at the end:

• bardıngmı? — did you go?
• bardımı? — did he go?
• bardığızmı? — did you all go?

The if-forms coming in lesson 9 take the particle in this same tail position — after the finished word.

Proposals, wishes, and the question you can't ask

The let-forms put the particle at the very end too: barayıkmı? — "shall we go?", barsınmı? — "should he go?". But a direct command to "you" cannot be made into a question at all — there is no way to ask an order. The site's tables mark those cells with a dash on purpose.

Question words carry the question themselves

When a sentence has kim "who", ne "what", kayda "where" or any of their relatives, the particle disappears — the word itself does the asking: kim keldi? — "who came?", sen kayrı barasa? — "where are you going?" The full set lives in the question words bank.

One honest gap: the two-word tenses built with edi — the subject of the next lesson — show no question forms in the tables yet. Where the particle lands there isn't settled, and the site would rather show nothing than guess.