Learn Turkish: Annem saçımı taradı ama tırnaklarımı kendim kestim. - My mother combed my hair but I cut my nails myself.

kendim means "myself." In this sentence, you are contrasting who did the action: your mother combed your hair, but you cut your nails yourself. To say "myself," you take the reflexive pronoun kendi and add the first-person possessive suffix -m. Using just ben (I) wouldn't give this strong emphasis that you did it on your own.

Both saçımı and tırnaklarımı end in -ı. What is this suffix doing?

That final -ı is the accusative case suffix, which marks the specific direct object of a verb. Let's break down saçımı: saç (hair) + -ım (my) + -ı (accusative, because it is the specific object being combed). Whenever a direct object has a possessive suffix like "my" or "your", it is always specific, so it requires the accusative case.

Why is hair singular (saçımı) but nails are plural (tırnaklarımı)?

In Turkish, the hair on your head is usually treated as a single collective noun (saç), just like in English. However, nails are treated as individual items, so we add the plural suffix -lar to make tırnaklar (nails) before adding the possessive (-ım) and accusative (-ı) suffixes.

Why does the past tense suffix look different in taradı and ?