Learn Turkish: Tereyağı buzdolabında. - The butter is in the refrigerator.

We use var and yok for existence, like saying "There is butter in the fridge." But this sentence is about the location of a specific item, meaning "The butter is in the fridge." When stating where a specific known thing is, Turkish just uses the location suffix -da without var.

The word for refrigerator is buzdolabı. Why is there an extra n in buzdolabında?

Buzdolabı is a compound noun made of buz (ice) and dolap (cupboard), linked by the suffix -ı. Whenever you add a location suffix like -da to a word that already ends in this compound suffix, you must insert the buffer letter -n- to separate them.

Why does the p from dolap change to a b in buzdolabı?

This is called consonant softening. When you add a suffix starting with a vowel (like the -ı in this word) to a noun ending in hard consonants like p, t, k, or ç, the consonant softens to make it easier to pronounce. Here, p becomes b.

Is tereyağı (butter) also a compound word?