Questions & Answers about Menüde patates çorbası var.
Why is it çorbası instead of just çorba?
This is an indefinite noun compound, which is how Turkish combines two nouns to make a single new concept (like "potato soup"). The first word (patates) stays bare, but the second word gets a possessive suffix. Because çorba ends in a vowel, we add the suffix -sı. Think of it as saying "potato its-soup".
Does patates need to be plural here, since soup is made of many potatoes?
No, it stays singular. In these noun compounds, the first noun just tells us the category or type of the second noun. Turkish prefers to keep this describing noun singular, so it is just patates (potato), not patatesler.
Why does menü take the suffix -de?
The suffix -de is the locative case, which covers "in", "on", and "at". While in English we say "on the menu", Turkish simply marks the menu as the location where the soup exists. Also, because the last vowel in menü is ü (a front vowel), it perfectly follows vowel harmony rules and takes -de rather than -da.
Why is var at the very end of the sentence?
In Turkish, verbs and words acting like verbs (such as var, meaning "there is" or "exists") almost always go at the end of the sentence. The natural word order for stating that something exists somewhere is: Location (menüde) + the thing that exists (patates çorbası) + var.
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