Questions & Answers about Otobüsün şoförü nerede?
How does the 'driver of the bus' compound work in this sentence?
This is a definite noun compound. In Turkish, you add a genitive (owner) suffix to the first word and a possessive (owned) suffix to the second word. So otobüs (bus) gets the -ün suffix to mean 'the bus's', and şoför (driver) gets the -ü suffix to mean 'its driver'. Together, otobüsün şoförü means 'the driver of the bus' (literally: the bus's its-driver).
Why is the suffix -ün on otobüs but only -ü on şoför?
The genitive (owner) suffix is -ın / -in / -un / -ün when added to a word ending in a consonant, so otobüs takes -ün. The 3rd person possessive (owned) suffix is just a single vowel (-ı / -i / -u / -ü) after a consonant, so şoför simply takes -ü.
Why do both of those suffixes happen to use the letter ü?
They both follow 4-way vowel harmony, but they are looking at different words! The -ün in otobüsün uses ü because the last vowel in otobüs is ü. The -ü in şoförü uses ü because the last vowel in şoför is ö (and according to the harmony rules, an ö is always followed by an ü).
Does the owner always come first in these Turkish compounds?
Yes! Unlike the English phrase 'driver of the bus', Turkish always puts the owner first. It is exactly like the English apostrophe-'s' structure: 'the bus's driver'.
A quick refresher: why use nerede instead of just asking 'where'?
Nerede specifically means 'where at?' or 'in what place?'. It is made of the root nere (what place) plus the locative case suffix -de (at/in/on). If you were asking where the driver was driving to, you would use nereye (where to), but here you want to know his current location.
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