Onların mutfağı geniş.

Their kitchen is spacious.

Breakdown of Onların mutfağı geniş.

• olmak: to be
• mutfak: the kitchen
• geniş: spacious
• onların: their

Questions & Answers about Onların mutfağı geniş.

What is the role of Onların in this sentence?

Onların is the possessive pronoun meaning “their.” It signals that the noun following it, mutfağı (kitchen), belongs to them.

How is the noun mutfağı formed from mutfak, and why does it end with -ı?

The base noun is mutfak (kitchen). The ending -ı is a possessive suffix that marks the noun as “their kitchen.” Despite onlar being plural, Turkish uses a singular possessive suffix when referring to one specific item owned by the group. Also, vowel harmony dictates that after the vowel a in mutfak, the appropriate form of the suffix is -ı.

Why is there no linking verb like “is” in the sentence Onların mutfağı geniş?

Turkish generally omits the copula (linking verb) in the present tense. So even though in English we say “Their kitchen is spacious,” Turkish efficiently conveys this by simply placing the adjective geniş after the noun without an explicit “is.”

Why does the adjective geniş follow mutfağı instead of preceding it?

In Turkish predicate constructions, adjectives typically come after the subject. In the sentence Onların mutfağı geniş, geniş functions as a predicate adjective describing the state of the kitchen. However, when an adjective directly modifies a noun (attributive position), it would normally precede the noun—for example, geniş mutfak means “spacious kitchen.”

How does vowel harmony affect the formation of mutfağı?

Vowel harmony ensures that the vowels in suffixes match the vowels of the base word. Since mutfak contains the vowel a, the correct possessive suffix is -ı rather than alternatives like -i, -u, or -ü. This makes the final form mutfağı both phonologically and grammatically correct.

If I wanted to say “Their kitchens are spacious” instead of “Their kitchen is spacious,” what would change in the sentence?

You would need to indicate that the noun is plural. In Turkish, to express “their kitchens,” you add the plural suffix to the noun before the possessive suffix. The sentence becomes Onların mutfakları geniş, where mutfakları combines the plural marker (-lar/-ler) with the third person possessive suffix (-ı) for a singular possessed object turned plural.