Questions & Answers about Banka, okul ve hastane arasında.
How does arasında translate to "between"?
It literally translates to "in their space". The root word is ara (space or gap). To make it a location, we add the possessive suffix -sı (its/their), the buffer letter -n-, and the locative suffix -da (at/in). So the whole phrase literally means "at the space of the school and hospital".
Shouldn't it be okulun ve hastanenin arasında with the genitive "of" endings?
You could use those endings if you were emphasizing a very specific school and hospital. However, when using ve (and) with arasında to say "between X and Y", Turkish speakers frequently leave the nouns in their plain dictionary form, treating them as general places.
What is the purpose of the comma after Banka?
The comma marks Banka as the subject of the sentence. Without it, the words would just look like a list of three places. The comma tells you that the bank is the thing being described, and the rest of the sentence tells you where it is.
Where is the word for "is" in this sentence?
In Turkish, the "is" for third-person subjects (he/she/it) is often invisible. While you could add the formal "to be" suffix -dır to the very end to make arasındadır, in everyday Turkish, ending the sentence on a location word like arasında automatically implies "is there".