Most Useful Demonstrative Adjectives in Turkish

Learn demonstrative adjectives in Turkish

Lesson Transcript

Hi everybody, my name is Seda.

Merhaba, ben Seda!

Welcome to TurkishClass101.com

Today we will learn about demonstratives!

Let’s talk about the grammar a little, before we start with our Turkish examples.

Demonstratives are adjectives or pronouns that point to a particular noun or to the noun it replaces.

In Turkish, there are 6 demonstratives while there are 4 in English.

Let’s look at them!

Here you will see we have different demonstratives in two different categories.

They depend on their distance and number…

If an object is near and singular, we use “bu”

This second part is different than English because English doesn’t have this one.

If an object is not very near but not that far away, we use “şu” in a singular form.

If an object is far away, we say “o”

And to make them plural, we add the suffix “lar”

They become:

bunlar

şunlar

onlar

So, how we decide how far or near an object to be able to pick the right demonstrative.

I am sorry to report that but it is not an exact science!

But I can say this:

If the object is close to you as you can touch it,

you should use “bu” like pointing physically.

If the object is not as close as you can touch it,

but almost touch it, when it is within the arm’s reach

like this, you should use “şu”

If the object is far away in a place

you cannot reach physically at all, you should use “o”

And of course, if there are more than one object you are talking about,

you should add the suffix “lar” and call them either

bunlar

şunlar

onlar

Ok! Now let’s look at their usage in a sentence. You can either use them

as adjectives - sıfat

as pronouns - zamir

Let's get started with adjectives, words describe the noun!

As you may know already,

in Turkish adjectives come before nouns as in English.

An example for this is:

sarı araba / yellow car

Here sarı is an adjective.

Now let’s look at examples with our demonstratives.

First is…

Bu araba çok pahalı.

"This car is very expensive."

Bu araba çok pahalı.

Şu telefonu hiç beğenmedim.

Here I will translate the word “şu” as “that”

because there is no word to translate

but do not forget this word as a distance is in between “this" and “that”.

“I didn’t like that phone at all"

Şu telefonu hiç beğenmedim.

O çocuğu yarın göreceğim.

“I will see that kid tomorrow"

O çocuğu yarın göreceğim.

Ok, now an important note for plural demonstratives. Turkish is again a little different than English here.

In Turkish, plural demonstratives are just used as pronouns, not as adjectives.

Even the noun is plural, we use a singular demonstrative before it.

As you may notice, Turkish is not very concerned with number matching between words.

You can see it in numbers as well.

While in English you say “two cars”, in Turkish you say “iki araba” instead of “iki arabalar”

So let’s come back to our demonstratives and give examples with plural nouns.

Bu ayakkabıları kim getirdi?

“Who brought these shoes?”

Bu ayakkabıları kim getirdi?

Şu poşetleri alır mısın?

“Would you take these/those bags?“

Şu poşetleri alır mısın?

O insanlar nereden geldi?

“Where did those people come from?”

O insanlar nereden geldi?

So this is it! This is how we use demonstrative adjectives in sentences.

Now let’s look at them as pronouns.

What are pronouns?

Pronouns are any of a small set of words in a language that are used as substitutes for nouns.

Let’s look at examples

Bu nedir?

“What is this?”

Bu nedir?

Here I need to add one more difference about Turkish demonstratives.

Turkish pronoun demonstratives can take suffixes indicating modes of nouns. I am not go into this subject right now in detail

because it is a whole new subject on its own but I will just say, we have 5 modes of nouns in Turkish:

1 is “plain” without any suffix

2 is the suffix ı/i (sometimes u/ü and can also take a buffer letter)

3 is the suffix a/e (can also take a buffer letter)

4 is the suffix da/de (sometimes ta/te)

5 is the suffix dan/den (sometimes tan/ten)

So these are the 5 modes of nouns… Pronouns also can take these suffixes as in this demonstrative pronoun example:

Şuna bakar mısın?

“Can you look at this/that?“

Here “şuna” means “at this/that” so prepositions attach to the demonstrative.

Şuna bakar mısın?

Bundan bir tane istiyorum.

“I want one of this.”

Here “bundan” means “of this”… Again preposition attaches to the demonstrative.

Bundan bir tane istiyorum.

Now let’s look at plural versions:

Bunlar ne?

“What are these?”

Bunlar ne?

What are these? Tell me about it.

Şunları verir misin?

“Would you give these/those?“

Şunları verir misin?

Onları buldum

“I found those.”

Onları buldum.

So that’s it guys!

Let’s wrap it up!

We have six demonstratives in Turkish which we use

either as an adjective or as a pronoun.

These are from the nearest to farthest:

singulars: bu - şu - o

plurals: bunlar-şunlar- onlar

If we use them as adjectives, we only use the singular version.

If we use them as pronouns, we use both singular and plural! And pronouns as in nouns, can take suffixes other than plural suffix of “lar”

I hope you understood the subject! If you have any questions, leave a comment below and write some sample sentences in Turkish to practice!

And you can click the link in the description and sign up for free at TurkishClass101.com to get access to the full list of vocabulary you need for daily life conversations.

See you next time! Görüşmek üzere!

Güle güle.

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