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Questions

No inversion, no do, no est-ce que. A yes/no question adds the particle mi, and a question-word question puts the question word where the answer would go.

Mi: the question particle

mi is written as a separate word, but it harmonises like a suffix with the word before it (four-way: mi mı mu mü):

mi itself is unstressed: the stress falls on the syllable just before it, gelDİN mi.

Where the person ending goes

In most tenses the person ending moves onto mi:

The -di past is the odd one: its endings stay on the verb.

Mi marks the focus

mi can sit after any word, and it questions exactly that word:

Question words

They take the same case endings as nouns — kime to whom, kimden from whom, kimin whose, neyi what (object) — and they sit right before the verb, where the answer will go:

Ne yapıyorsun? — Kitap okuyorum. — "What are you doing? — I'm reading." Nereye gidiyorsun? — Eve gidiyorum. — "Where are you going? — Home." Kaç yaşındasın? — "How old are you?" (lit. in how many years are you) Bu ne kadar? — "How much is this?"

A question word never takes mi as well: ✗ Ne mi yapıyorsun?

Tag questions and answers

Güzel, değil mi? — "It's nice, isn't it?"

Embedded questions

In speech a whole question can simply be dropped in before the verb: Gelecek mi, bilmiyorum. — "I don't know whether he's coming."

Against Japanese and Korean

mi is Japanese か in function — a particle that turns a sentence into a question with nothing else moved — but か only closes the sentence, while mi can land mid-sentence on the word in focus. Korean has no particle; it marks questions with the verb ending (가요? 갔어요?). All three leave question words in place.

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