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Questions & Answers about İki kardeşim var.
There's no word for "have" here. How does this sentence mean "I have"?
Turkish doesn't have a direct verb for "to have". Instead, it uses the word var (there is / exists) combined with a possessive suffix. İki kardeşim var literally means "My two siblings exist," which is the standard way Turkish speakers say "I have two siblings."
Why is it kardeşim instead of kardeşlerim if there are two of them?
In Turkish, whenever you put a number before a noun (like iki), the noun must remain in its singular form. You drop the plural suffix -ler completely. Therefore, you just add the possessive suffix -im (my) directly to the singular word kardeş.
How exactly is the "my" suffix attached to kardeş in this sentence?
The suffix for "my" is -(I)m. Because kardeş ends in a consonant, we need a vowel to connect the -m. Since the last vowel in kardeş is 'e', 4-way vowel harmony rules dictate that we use an 'i'. So, we add -im to get kardeşim.
Does kardeş mean brothers or sisters?
Kardeş translates directly to "sibling" and is completely gender-neutral. If you needed to be specific in Turkish, you would add another word and say iki kız kardeşim var (I have two sisters) or iki erkek kardeşim var (I have two brothers).