Arkadaşım bugün neşeli.

to be

Breakdown of Arkadaşım bugün neşeli.

• bugün: today
• benim: my
• arkadaş: the friend

Questions & Answers about Arkadaşım bugün neşeli.

Why is there no “is” in the sentence?

Turkish doesn’t use a separate verb for “to be” in the present tense for third person. With adjective or noun predicates, the present-tense copula is zero:

• Arkadaşım bugün neşeli. = My friend is cheerful today. You’ll see endings for other tenses (e.g., past) or sometimes the formal/inferential suffix -dir/-dır/-dür/-dur, but for simple present third person, nothing is added.

What does the ending in arkadaşım mean?

The suffix -ım/-im/-um/-üm marks 1st-person singular possession (my), chosen by vowel harmony. Since the last vowel of arkadaş is a, it takes -ım:

• arkadaşım = my friend More examples:
• evim (my house), okulum (my school), günüm (my day)

Could arkadaşım mean “a friend of mine”?

By itself, arkadaşım is typically definite: “my friend.” To say “a friend of mine,” use:

• bir arkadaşım (a friend of mine)
• or more explicitly: arkadaşlarımdan biri (one of my friends)

Can I change the word order? Where can bugün go?

Yes. All are grammatical, with slight differences in emphasis: