Monday, February 26, 2007

Questions with 'to be'

Since I was clearly confused in an earlier post on the relationship of "to be" and questions, here's the same subject from a different angle.

My textbook says "To turn İngilizsiniz (you are English) into a question, follow these steps:"

StepExample
Take the statementİngilizsiniz
Separate the to be ending from the noun or adjectiveİngiliz siniz
Put mi in front of the ending.İngiliz misiniz

Using mi to form a question echoes an earlier post.

EnglishStatementQuestion
I am beautiful.Güzelim.Güzel miyim?
You're blind.Körsün.Kör müsün?
It's difficult.Zor.Zor mu?
We're ready.Hazırız.Hazır mıyız?
You're open.Açıksınız.Açık mısınız?
They're Turkish.Onlar Türk.Onlar Türk mü?

2 comments:

Barry said...

The question particle (mi, mu, etc.) is cool. You put it right after the thing you're asking about. So for example:

Meltem Türk mü? = Is Meltem Turkish?

Meltem mi Türk? = Is it Meltem who's Turkish?

Dennis said...

Question particle: a neat summation of the mi, mu, etc. concept. Thank you!

I don't recall seeing that mentioned in the particular workbook I'm using at the moment. However, this underscores a point my workbook makes — that is, don't let this workbook be your last. Let it be one of some others; the idea being to glean something from each author or set of authors.

My computer language studies work much the same way.

Teşekkürler tekrar!