Learn Turkish: Toplantı şubat ayında mı? - Is the meeting in February?

In Turkish, it is very common to pair the name of a month with the word ay (month) to form a noun compound. While you can absolutely say şubatta (in February), saying şubat ayında (literally "in the month of February") is often preferred and sounds very natural.

How exactly does ayında break down to mean "in the month of"?

Let's take it apart! It starts with ay (month). Then we add the suffix -ı to link it to February (şubat ayı = month of February). Next is the buffer letter -n-, which is used before adding location suffixes to this kind of compound. Finally, we add the locative suffix -da, which means "in" or "at".

Why isn't şubat capitalized in this sentence?

In Turkish, months and days of the week are only capitalized if they are part of a specific, exact date (like 14 Şubat). Since we are just talking about February in a general sense here, it starts with a lowercase letter.

Why do we use mı for the question word here?

The question particle always follows 4-way vowel harmony based on the word immediately before it. The last vowel in ayında is an a. According to the rules of vowel harmony, an a or ı is followed by mı.