Turkish has no separate verb for “to be” in the present. To say “I am a teacher” you add a personal ending straight onto the word: öğretmen becomes öğretmenim. The endings are -im, -sin, nothing, -iz, -siniz and -ler, and they change their vowel by harmony. Negatives use değil; yes/no questions use the mı particle.
Published 21 October 2026
English leans on one small verb all day long: I am, you are, she is, we are. Turkish does the same job without any such verb at all. Where English adds a separate word, Turkish adds an ending to the word that is already there.
So “teacher” is öğretmen, and “I am a teacher” is one word: öğretmenim. “Tired” is yorgun, and “I am tired” is yorgunum. Nothing was inserted between them; the I am is baked into the tail of the word. Grammarians call this set of endings the copula — the piece that links a subject to what you are saying about it. Learn the six of them and you can make a complete Turkish sentence out of a single noun or adjective.
There is one ending per person, and each one shifts its vowel to match the word it joins — that is vowel harmony, the rule behind every Turkish ending. The four-way endings (-im and friends) copy both the front/back and the rounded/unrounded quality of the last vowel; the simple two-way ones just follow front or back.
| Person | after e, i | after a, ı | after o, u | after ö, ü |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ben — I am | -im | -ım | -um | -üm |
| sen — you are | -sin | -sın | -sun | -sün |
| o — he/she/it is | (nothing) — or formal -dir / -dır / -dur / -dür | |||
| biz — we are | -iz | -ız | -uz | -üz |
| siz — you are (plural / polite) | -siniz | -sınız | -sunuz | -sünüz |
| onlar — they are | -ler | -lar | -lar | -ler |
Two things to notice straight away. The third person is usually nothing at all: O öğretmen is a complete sentence, “He is a teacher.” And when the word ends in a vowel, the ben and biz endings slip a buffer y in first, so the two vowels do not collide: hasta (ill) → hastayım (I am ill), hastayız (we are ill).
Here is öğretmen run through all six, then three more words whose last vowels pull the endings into their other shapes. Read down each column and you are hearing vowel harmony do its work.
| öğretmen (teacher) | yorgun (tired) | hasta (ill) | Türk (Turkish) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ben | öğretmenim | yorgunum | hastayım | Türküm |
| sen | öğretmensin | yorgunsun | hastasın | Türksün |
| o | öğretmen | yorgun | hasta | Türk |
| biz | öğretmeniz | yorgunuz | hastayız | Türküz |
| siz | öğretmensiniz | yorgunsunuz | hastasınız | Türksünüz |
| onlar | öğretmenler | yorgunlar | hastalar | Türkler |
Every form in that grid is built by the same move: take the word, look at its last vowel, add the ending in the matching coat. No new vocabulary, no verb to memorise.
To make any of these negative, you do not change the ending. You add the separate word değil (“not”) after the predicate, and the personal ending hops onto değil instead.
| Person | Positive | Negative |
|---|---|---|
| ben | öğretmenim — I am a teacher | öğretmen değilim — I am not a teacher |
| sen | yorgunsun — you are tired | yorgun değilsin — you are not tired |
| o | hasta — she is ill | hasta değil — she is not ill |
| biz | hazırız — we are ready | hazır değiliz — we are not ready |
| siz | Türksünüz — you are Turkish | Türk değilsiniz — you are not Turkish |
The convenient part: değil never changes its own shape. Because its last vowel is i, the endings on it take the front, unrounded shapes (-im, -sin, -iz, -siniz); because the word ends in a consonant, no buffer y is needed. One word, learned once, negates every “to be” sentence you will ever make.
Yes/no questions use the little question particle mı, which also harmonises (mı / mi / mu / mü). It sits as its own word after the predicate, and the personal ending attaches to it rather than to the noun.
You will meet a third-person ending -dir (with its harmony shapes -dır, -dur, -dür, and -tir / -tır / -tur / -tür after the voiceless consonants p, ç, t, k, f, h, s, ş — so Türk gives Türktür). It is tempting to treat it as the real word for “is” and bolt it onto everything. Do not: in ordinary speech the third person is bare, and adding -dir to a plain statement can make you sound like a government notice. Overusing it is a common learner tell.
-dir has three honest homes. It states settled, encyclopaedic facts in writing: İstanbul Türkiye’nin en kalabalık şehridir (“Istanbul is Turkey’s most populous city”). It makes signs and official rules sound binding: Giriş ücretsizdir (“Entry is free”). And in speech it flags an inference — something you conclude rather than see — often with herhalde or kesin: Işıklar yanıyor, Ahmet evdedir (“The lights are on — Ahmet must be home”). If you actually saw Ahmet, you drop it: Ahmet evde. Until you need one of those three, leave -dir off and you will sound more natural, not less.
The copula says that something is a certain way — “the room is big”, “I am a teacher”. It does not say that something exists. For “there is” and “there isn’t”, Turkish uses two different little words, var and yok: Oda büyük (“the room is big”) versus Odada masa var (“there is a table in the room”). Keep the jobs apart and a whole class of beginner sentences comes out right.
These personal endings are not a one-off for “to be”. They belong to the same person-ending family used by forms such as the present continuous and future. The -um in yorgunum (“I am tired”) is the -um in geliyorum (“I am coming”); the -sin in öğretmensin is the -sin in geliyorsun. Learn the copula first and the same person-marking pattern will already feel familiar when you meet those tenses.
One honest overlap to watch: öğretmenim can mean either “I am a teacher” (this copula) or “my teacher” (the possessive -im). Same letters, two jobs. The sentence around it decides which, and in speech the stress differs — but it is worth knowing the clash exists so it does not ambush you.
The past of “to be” is just as tidy: add -(y)dı before the person ending. Öğretmendim is “I was a teacher”, yorgundum is “I was tired”, hastaydım is “I was ill” (buffer y after the vowel again). It harmonises exactly like everything above. That is the whole “to be” system: a present with no verb, and a past that is one syllable more.
Turkish has no word for “to be” in the present. You attach a personal ending — -im, -sin, (nothing), -iz, -siniz, -ler — straight onto the noun or adjective, let vowel harmony choose its shape, negate with değil, and question with mı.
Build the Turkish for each. The last vowel of the predicate decides the ending.
Answers: (1) Hazırım — last vowel ı, back unrounded, so -ım. (2) Öğrenciyiz — öğrenci ends in a vowel, so buffer y then -iz. (3) Yorgun değilsin — negate with değil; the ending lives on değil, always front-unrounded, hence -sin. (4) Türk müsünüz? — the particle harmonises to mü after ü, then -sünüz for siz. (5) Hasta — third person is bare; O hasta if you want the pronoun.
If those five came out right, you can already make, deny and question a Turkish sentence without a single verb.
This is the sentence skeleton everything else hangs on, so it pairs naturally with vowel harmony (which chooses every ending’s shape) and the question particle mı. When you are ready for sentences with real verbs, the same person-endings return in the present tense. And if you have not yet met the machinery that lets Turkish stack endings like this, start with how Turkish builds words.
Turkish is now live in Gora, where the copula is taught through sentences you build from day one rather than as a paradigm to memorise. Start the Turkish course.