Question 1

Why doesn’t personel take a plural suffix like -ler even though it means “staff” or “employees”?

Accepted Answer

personel is a collective noun in Turkish (and a loanword from French). It already refers to a group collectively, so you normally don’t add -ler. If you really want to emphasize multiple separate “staff groups,” you could say personeller, but in everyday use personel covers both singular and plural senses.

Question 2

Why is there no word for “the” or “a” before personel or ofiste?

Accepted Answer

Turkish has no articles (no words corresponding to English “a,” “an,” or “the”). Definiteness or indefiniteness is understood from context. If you need to be explicit, you can use demonstratives (bu personel = “this staff”), possessives (personelimiz = “our staff”), or quantifiers (bir personel = “a staff member”).

Question 3

Why is ofis changed to ofiste instead of staying as ofis?

Accepted Answer

That’s the locative case, used for “in,” “at,” or “on.” You add the suffix -de/-da to show location.  
• Stem: ofis (“office”)  
• Vowel harmony: last vowel in ofis is i (a front vowel), so the suffix is -de (front), but because it follows a voiceless consonant s, d becomes t.  
→ ofis + -de → ofis + -te = ofiste (“in/at the office”)

Question 4

How is the verb çalışıyor formed from the root çalış-?

Accepted Answer

çalışıyor is the present continuous (progressive) form of çalış- (“to work”). It consists of:  
  1. Stem: çalış-  
  2. Progressive suffix: -(I)yor, where I is a vowel chosen by vowel harmony.  
     – Last vowel of çalış- is a (a back vowel), so the suffix vowel is ı → -ıyor.  
  3. No buffer consonant is needed because the stem ends in a consonant.  
Putting it together: çalış + ıyor = çalışıyor (“is working”).

Question 5

Why doesn’t çalışıyor have a separate ending to show “he” or “she”?

Accepted Answer

In Turkish, the third-person singular is zero-marked in this tense. The suffix -(I)yor already carries the person by default for “he/she/it.” Only first and second persons take extra endings:  
  • ben çalışıyor+um = I am working  
  • sen çalışıyor+sun = you are working  
  • o çalışıyor = he/she/it is working (no extra ending)

Question 6

Could you use personeller instead of personel if you want to stress “many employees”?

Accepted Answer

Yes, personeller is grammatically possible and would literally mean “multiple staffs” or “groups of staff.” However, it’s uncommon because personel by itself already implies a group. If you want to count individual employees, you’d more often say personel üyeleri (“staff members”) or use numerals: on personel = “ten staff members.”

Personel ofiste çalışıyor.

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