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Questions & Answers about Kalem kısa mı?
Why is the question word mı and not mi here?
The question particle follows 4-way vowel harmony. Look at the last vowel in the word right before it, which is the a in kısa. After the vowels a or ı, the question particle always becomes mı.
Where is the word for 'is' in this sentence?
Turkish doesn't use a separate word for 'is' here. Just placing the subject (kalem) and the adjective (kısa) together gives you 'The pen is short'. Adding the question particle mı at the end turns that statement into the question 'Is the pen short?'.
Why is there a space before mı if it follows vowel harmony rules like a suffix?
That is just a special spelling rule for the question particle! Even though it changes its vowel to match the word before it, the question particle is always written as a separate word with a space before it.
How do we know it means 'the pen' and not 'a pen'?
Turkish does not have a specific word for 'the'. When a noun like kalem is the subject of a sentence, it is usually understood as specific, meaning 'the pen'. If we wanted to ask about 'a pen', we would use the word bir (a/one).