Bu sokakta kiralık ev var.

There is a house for rent on this street.

Breakdown of Bu sokakta kiralık ev var.

• bu: this
• ev: the house
• sokak: the street
• var: to be

Questions & Answers about Bu sokakta kiralık ev var.

What does var mean here, and why isn’t there a separate word for is?

Var is the key word that means there is / there are / exists.

So the pattern is:

• Bu sokakta = on this street
• kiralık ev = a house/home for rent
• var = there is

Turkish often makes this kind of existence sentence with var instead of using a separate word like English is.

A very common pattern is:

[place] + [thing] + var = There is/are [thing] in/at [place]

So Bu sokakta kiralık ev var literally works like:

On this street, a for-rent house exists.

Why does sokak become sokakta?

Because Turkish adds the locative suffix to show location: in / on / at.

The basic locative suffix is:

• -da / -de / -ta / -te

Here:

• sokak = street
• sokakta = on/in the street

It becomes -ta here for two reasons:

1. The last vowel in sokak is a, so the suffix uses a rather than e.
2. The word ends in k, which is a voiceless consonant, so d changes to t.

So:

• sokak + da would not be correct
• sokak + ta gives sokakta

Why does Turkish use sokakta for on this street, not something that literally means on?