Breakdown of Onun çenesi büyük, benim çenem küçük.
büyük
big
küçük
small
ben
I
onun
his / her / its
çene
chin, jaw
Questions & Answers about Onun çenesi büyük, benim çenem küçük.
Why is there no buffer n on çenesi if that's what we are learning right now?
The buffer n appears when you add a case suffix (like "in", "to", or "from") after a 3rd person possessive suffix. In this sentence, "his chin" is the subject and doesn't take a case suffix. So we just have çene (chin) + si (his/her), and no buffer n is needed.
Why does the word onun (his) have an n in the middle?
Onun is formed from the pronoun o (he/she/it) and the genitive suffix -un (which shows possession). Because Turkish doesn't like two vowels next to each other, a buffer letter is needed. For the pronouns o, bu, and şu, the buffer letter is always n.
Why does çenesi use a buffer s instead of the usual buffer y?
The 3rd person possessive suffix (-i, -ı, -u, or -ü) is special. When you attach it to a noun that ends in a vowel, like çene, you must always use s as the buffer letter. The buffer y is used for most other suffixes, but not for the 3rd person possessive.
Why does çenem (my chin) only get an m added to it, but çenesi (his chin) gets si?
The suffix for "my" is -im, but when a word already ends in a vowel, the vowel in the suffix drops out, leaving just -m. The suffix for "his/her" is just a vowel (-i). You can't drop it, so to avoid two vowels clashing, you have to add the buffer s, making it -si.
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