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Questions & Answers about Kitap zor mu?
Why is the question particle mu here instead of mi or mı?
It is because of 4-way vowel harmony! The question particle changes its vowel to match the last vowel of the word right before it. The last vowel in zor is 'o'. Under the 4-way rule, if the last vowel is 'o' or 'u', the particle must use 'u', making it mu.
Where is the word for "is" in this sentence?
Turkish does not use a separate word for "is" in simple descriptive sentences like this. By placing Kitap (the book) and zor (difficult) together and adding the question particle, the meaning "is" naturally happens without needing an extra verb.
Does the question particle always go at the very end of the sentence?
Not always. It usually comes right after the specific thing you want to question. Here, you want to know if the book is difficult, so mu follows zor. If you instead wanted to ask "Is it the book that is difficult?" (maybe compared to a video), you would put the particle right after the book: Kitap mı zor?
Why is mu written as a separate word if its vowel depends on zor?
That is a special quirk of the Turkish question particle! Even though it acts exactly like a suffix by following the vowel harmony of the word before it, the rule is to always write it as a separate word with a space. So it is zor mu, never zormu.