The Word That Makes a Question: Turkish mı / mi / mu / mü

English turns a statement into a yes/no question by moving a word around (“You are tired” → “Are you tired?”) or by adding “do/does” (“You like tea” → “Do you like tea?”). Turkish does neither. It adds one small, separate word after whatever you want to ask about — and that word is spelled apart from everything else, never attached to it.

What this particle does

The particle mı/mi/mu/mü can turn a noun, an adjective, or a verb into a yes/no question, simply by following it as its own word:

• Ev mi? — (Is it) a house?
• Yorgun mu? — (Is he/she) tired?
• Geldi mi? — Did he/she come?

Unlike a suffix, it always stands apart with a space on either side — you’ll never see it fused onto the word it follows the way a case ending or a possessive suffix would be.

Forming it

The particle harmonizes 4-way with the last vowel of the word immediately before it:

For example: kitap (“book,” last vowel a) takes mı → Kitap mı? (“[Is it] a book?”), while süt (“milk,” last vowel ü) takes mü → Süt mü? (“[Is it] milk?”) — the same four-way harmony you’d apply to a suffix, just written as a separate word instead of glued onto the end.

When a personal ending is needed — because the sentence has no other verb to carry it, as in a predicative “to be” sentence, or because the tense in question puts the ending after the particle — that ending attaches directly onto the particle itself, with a buffer -y- inserted before a vowel-initial ending so the two vowels don’t collide:

• Yorgun musun? — Are you tired? (mu + sun)
• Öğretmen miyim? — Am I a teacher? (mi + y + im)

Exactly how the personal ending lands on the particle differs somewhat from tense to tense — the predicative “to be” and the present-continuous each have their own dedicated lesson showing the full paradigm for that specific case.

Exceptions worth knowing

A plural or person-marking suffix already on the word can come between the word and the particle, and the particle then harmonizes with that suffix instead of the original word. With onlar (they) forms, for instance, the plural marker attaches to the verb first, and only a bare, unchanging particle — no personal ending — follows:

• Geliyorlar mı? — Are they coming? (particle harmonizes with -lar’s a, not with the verb stem)

Where you place the particle changes what’s actually being asked, not just how it’s asked. Because Turkish word order is comparatively free and the slot right before the verb carries special emphasis, sliding mı/mi/mu/mü to sit right after a specific word — rather than at the very end of the sentence — narrows the question down to just that word:

• Ali geldi mi? — Did Ali come? (question about the whole event: coming or not)
• Ali mi geldi? — Was it Ali who came? (question about who, assuming someone came)

Both sentences use the exact same words in a different order; only where mi lands changes which part of the sentence is actually in doubt.

Examples

• Bu senin kitabın mı? — Is this your book?
• Yarın hava güzel mi? — Will the weather be nice tomorrow?
• Sen de bizimle mi geliyorsun? — Are you coming with us too? (focus on “you too,” via mi’s placement right after sen de)
• Anahtarları sen mi aldın? — Was it you who took the keys? (focus on “you,” not on whether the keys were taken)
• Bu otobüs merkeze gidiyor mu? — Does this bus go to the center? (whole-event question, particle at the very end)
• Kardeşin evli mi? — Is your sibling married?

Try it yourself

Babi, Speafy’s AI tutor, will drill the four-way harmony choice until mı/mi/mu/mü comes out automatically for any word you throw at it, and will contrast sentences like Ali geldi mi? and Ali mi geldi? side by side so the placement-changes-meaning rule sticks — the kind of subtle contrast that Speafy’s FSRS-based flashcards are especially good at keeping fresh in memory.