Breakdown of Annen mutfakta çorba ısıtıyor muydu?
mutfak
kitchen
çorba
soup
anne
mother
mi
question particle (mı/mi/mu/mü)
Questions & Answers about Annen mutfakta çorba ısıtıyor muydu?
How is the "was she heating?" part formed in ısıtıyor muydu?
It combines the continuous suffix -ıyor (heating) on the verb ısıtmak (to heat) with the past tense question particle muydu (was she?). The word muydu is made of mu (question particle) plus y (buffer letter) plus du (past tense 'she' ending). Together, they form the past continuous tense question.
Why does mutfakta end in -ta instead of the usual -da for "in"?
This is because of consonant harmony. The word mutfak (kitchen) ends in a hard consonant (k). Because of this, the locative suffix (which means "in" or "at") must start with a hard consonant too to match it, changing from -da to -ta.
Why is the word for soup just çorba and not çorbayı?
Leaving off the specific object suffix (-yı) makes the noun indefinite. The sentence means she was heating "soup" in general, not a specific pot of soup ("the soup") that we were already talking about.
Where is the word "your" in this sentence?
It is built directly into the word Annen. The base word is anne (mother), and adding the -n makes it "your mother". Turkish often drops the separate pronoun Senin (your) because this suffix already gives us that information.