Question Pronouns: kim, ne, hangi

To ask who, what, which, where, how many, how much, Turkish uses a small set of question words — and they behave very differently from their English equivalents. The two big differences: a Turkish wh-word stays where the answer would go (no fronting), and it takes the same case ending the answer would carry. Once you internalize "ask in the slot, mark the case," Turkish questions become almost mechanical.

The question words

kim and ne are true pronouns — they stand in for a noun and take case endings on their own. hangi is a determiner: it always leans on a following noun (hangi otobüs "which bus"). And nere is unusual — you almost never see the bare stem; it shows up dressed in a case ending (nerede, nereye, nereden).

Wh-words stay in place

In English you yank the question word to the front: Whom did you see? (object "whom" jumps ahead of the subject). Turkish does not do this. The question word sits in the exact slot the answer would occupy, and the rest of the sentence keeps its normal order.

The answer — say, Ali'yi gördüm "I saw Ali" — has the object Ali'yi right before the verb. The question simply swaps Ali'yi for kimi, in the same place. Nothing moves.

Wh-words take the answer's case

This is the heart of the system. Because the answer carries a case ending, the question word must carry the same ending. Turkish has no caseless "whom" that floats free — the question word is fully inflected.

• subject → kim "who" (no ending): Kim geldi? "Who came?"
• direct object → kimi / neyi: Kimi gördün? "Whom did you see?", Neyi istiyorsun? "What do you want?"
• "to whom / to where" → kime / nereye: Kime verdin? "To whom did you give it?"
• "in/at where" → kimde / nerede: Nerede oturuyorsun? "Where do you live?"
• "from where/whom" → kimden / nereden / neden: Nereden geliyorsun? "Where are you coming from?"
• "with whom/what" → kiminle / neyle: Kiminle gittin? "Who did you go with?"
• "whose" → kimin: Bu çanta kimin? "Whose bag is this?"

Two spelling points fall out of vowel rules. ne takes a buffer y before the accusative and instrumental: ne + (y)i → neyi, ne + (y)le → neyle, because a suffix vowel can't sit straight against the stem vowel. And ne has an irregular ablative: "why / from what" is neden, not neyden — a frozen form that doubles as the everyday word for "why."

hangi and kaç: determiners before a noun

hangi "which" and kaç "how many" don't stand alone the way kim/ne do — they sit in front of a noun. Crucially, kaç takes a singular noun (numbers don't pluralize their noun in Turkish), and any case ending lands on the noun, not on hangi/kaç.

In Hangi filmi izleyelim, the accusative -i sits on film, giving filmi — hangi itself never inflects. To make hangi stand alone ("which one"), add the possessive -si: hangisi "which one (of them)," which then declines like a noun — hangisini "which one" (accusative), hangisine "to which one."

nere — the bound "where"

nere deserves its own note because the bare stem barely surfaces. You'll meet it almost exclusively in case forms: nerede "where (at)," nereye "where to," nereden "where from," nereli "from where / what nationality." The bare nere appears only in casual fragments like Nere o? "Where's that place?" Treat the three case forms as your working vocabulary.

Common mistakes

The answer (Ali'yi) is accusative, so the question word must be accusative too: kimi. Bare kim is only the subject ("who came").

The accusative of ne is neyi — one word, with a buffer y. Never ney i and never nei.

Don't import English wh-fronting. The question word stays in its natural slot with its case; the rest of the sentence keeps Turkish order (verb last).

kaç, like any number word, takes a singular noun: kaç kişi, not kaç kişiler.

Key takeaways

• kim "who," ne "what" are pronouns that decline: kimi/kime/kimde/kimden/kiminle/kimin, neyi/neye/neden/neyle.
• hangi "which" and kaç "how many" are determiners before a noun; the case ending goes on the noun, and kaç keeps the noun singular.
• Wh-words stay in place — no fronting — and take exactly the case the answer would have: Kimi gördün? mirrors Ali'yi gördüm.
• ne needs a buffer y before vowel suffixes (neyi, neyle) and has the irregular ablative neden ("why / from what").
• nere lives in its case forms: nerede, nereye, nereden.