Questions & Answers about Gıda taze olmalı.
Gıda is a general, often mass-noun for “food” (food in general).
- Yiyecek literally means “something edible,” often used countably (“an edible item”).
- Yemek can mean both “a meal/dish” and the verb “to eat.”
When an adjective is attributive (directly modifying a noun), it goes before: taze ekmek (“fresh bread”).
Here taze is part of the predicate (“be fresh”), so it follows the subject:
Gıda (subject) + taze (predicate adjective) + olmalı (verb of necessity).
Yes, you can.
- Taze gıda olmalı emphasizes “There must be fresh food.”
- Gıda taze olmalı emphasizes “The food must be fresh.”
Both are grammatically correct; the nuance shifts slightly.
-malı/-meli expresses necessity or obligation (“must/should”). You attach it to a verb root:
ol- (to be) → ol-malı (“must be”).
You add -malı/-meli to the verb root, then attach personal endings (3rd person singular has no extra ending):
• Ben gel-meli-yim (I must come)
• Sen gel-meli-sin (you must come)
• O gel-meli (he/she/it must come)
• Biz gel-meli-yiz
• Siz gel-meli-siniz
• Onlar gel-meli(ler)
Thus olmalı = “it/he/she must be.”
Yes. Adding the epistemic/formal suffix -dır/-dir yields olmalıdır, which sounds more formal or is preferred in writing:
Gıda taze olmalıdır.
Turkish suffixes follow the last vowel of the verb root:
• Back vowels (a, ı, o, u) → -malı
• Front vowels (e, i, ö, ü) → -meli
Since ol contains o (a back vowel), you use -malı.