Learn Turkish: Müşteri terazinin yanında durur. - The customer stands next to the scales.

In Turkish, position words like "next to", "inside", or "under" work like possessions. Yan means "side". So terazinin yanında literally translates to "at the scale's side". You use the genitive ending -nin on terazi (scale) and the possessive ending -ı on yan (side), followed by the locative case -da to mean "at".

What is the second "n" doing in the word yanında?

The root word is yan (side). The -ı is the possessive ending meaning "its". The second n is a special buffer letter. In Turkish, whenever you add a spatial case ending like -da to a word that already has a third-person possessive ending, you must put an -n- between them.

Why does the sentence use durur instead of duruyor for "stands"?

Durur uses the Turkish simple present tense (the aorist), marked by -ur. This tense is used for general facts, routines, or characteristic behaviors. The sentence describes a general rule or fact about where a customer typically stands. If a specific customer were standing there right now, you would use the present continuous form, duruyor.

I thought durmak meant "to stop". Can it also mean "to stand"?