Learn Turkish: Herkes nişanda ağlamış mı? - Did everyone supposedly cry at the engagement?

Herkes nişanda ağlamış mı?

Did everyone supposedly cry at the engagement?

Breakdown of Herkes nişanda ağlamış mı?

question particle (mı/mi/mu/mü)

nişan

engagement

Questions & Answers about Herkes nişanda ağlamış mı?

Why is the verb ağlamış instead of ağladı?

ağladı is the direct past tense ("Did everyone cry?"), which you use when you saw it happen. Here, the sentence uses the reported past tense suffix -mış. We use -mış mı to ask about something we didn't witness ourselves, so it translates closer to "Did everyone supposedly cry?" or "I heard they cried, is that true?".

"Everyone" is a plural concept. Why isn't the verb plural (ağlamışlar)?

In Turkish, the word herkes (everyone) is grammatically singular. Because of this, the verb must also be in the third-person singular form (ağlamış), not the plural form (ağlamışlar).

How does the word nişanda break down?

It comes from nişan (engagement) plus the locative case suffix -da (at/in/on). So, nişanda means "at the engagement".

Why is the question particle mı written as a separate word?

The yes/no question particle (mı/mi/mu/mü) is always written with a space before it in Turkish. However, it still follows 4-way vowel harmony based on the word right before it, which is why it becomes mı to match the "ı" in ağlamış.