Questions and negatives — the two switches

Two small pieces of machinery, and with them you can turn any sentence you know into a question or its opposite. THE QUESTION SWITCH. Turkish has no «do you…?» and no word-order gymnastics. You add a little word — mi, mı, mu or mü, picked by vowel harmony — and it stands on its own, written separately: Geliyorsun. → Geliyor musun? (You are coming. → Are you coming?) Türksün. → Türk müsün? (You are Turkish. → Are you Turkish?) The question word goes right after whatever you are actually asking about, and that lets you do something English needs stress for: Sen mi geldin? = Was it YOU who came? Sen geldin mi? = Did you come? THE NEGATIVE SWITCH. Insert -me or -ma between the stem and the tense: gel-di-m (I came) → gel-me-di-m (I did not come) anlı-yor-um → anla-mı-yor-um (I do not understand) For «is not» with nouns and adjectives, use the separate word değil: doktor değilim = I am not a doctor. And the opposite of var (there is) is not «var değil» but its own word: yok. That is the entire apparatus. No auxiliaries, no «don't/doesn't/didn't», no rising intonation to worry about.