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Questions & Answers about Kızlar öğrenci.
Why is the plural suffix -lar and not -ler here?
Turkish uses 2-way vowel harmony for plurals. You look at the last vowel in the word. The word kız has the vowel ı. Since ı is a back vowel (along with a, o, and u), it takes the suffix -lar. If the word had a front vowel (e, i, ö, ü), it would take -ler.
Why isn't öğrenci pluralized? Shouldn't it be öğrenciler to mean "students"?
In English, we say "The girls are students" making both words plural. In Turkish, if the subject is already clearly plural (like kızlar), you usually do not add a plural suffix to the descriptive noun or adjective that follows it. Saying Kızlar öğrenci is perfectly correct and natural.
Where is the word for "are" in this sentence?
Turkish doesn't have a standalone verb for "to be" (am, is, are). Instead, "to be" is formed by suffixes at the end of the sentence. For the third person (he, she, it, they), no suffix is needed at all! Just placing the subject (kızlar) and the descriptive noun (öğrenci) next to each other creates the "are" meaning automatically.