Questions & Answers about Telefon yastığın altında.
Why does yastık (pillow) become yastığın?
To say 'under the pillow' in Turkish, you literally say 'at the pillow's underside'. So, yastık needs the possessor ending -ın to mean 'the pillow's'. When adding an ending that starts with a vowel to a word ending in -k, the k softens into a ğ (soft g), making it yastığın.
Break down the word altında for me. Why isn't it just altda?
Spatial words like alt (bottom/under) work like possessed nouns in Turkish. altında is made of four parts: alt (bottom) + ı (its) + n (a buffer letter used before location endings) + da (at/on). Together, it literally means 'at its bottom'.
Where is the word for 'is' in this sentence?
There isn't a separate word! In Turkish, the 'to be' verb (am/is/are) is usually left out for the third person ('he/she/it is'). You just state the subject and its location: Telefon yastığın altında (Phone pillow's at-its-underside).
How do we know it means 'the' phone and 'the' pillow if there is no word for 'the'?
Turkish doesn't have a direct word for 'the'. However, subjects at the beginning of a sentence (Telefon) and words that have a possessor ending (yastığın) are naturally understood as specific, definite things by default.
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