Turkish 22 - Demonstratives

Below you can see a table with the Turkish demonstratives. The English word this translates into Turkish as bu. The English word that has two translations into Turkish. Şu refers to objects that are too far away to use bu, but are in sight. O is normally used for referring to objects that are out of sight, but can always be used instead of şu.

SingularPlural
Nearby objectBuBunlar
Object further away in sightŞuŞunlar
Further away or abstractOOnlar

Note that the plural forms take the suffix lar. For some reason the buffer letter n is added before this ending.

We can use demonstratives as nouns:

This is coffee.Bu kahve.
ThatIN SIGHT is a cat.Şu bir kedi.
That is a good idea.O iyi bir fikir.
These are beautiful.Bunlar güzel.
ThoseIN SIGHT are ugly.Şunlar çirkin.
Those are bigOnlar büyük.

Or we can use them in front of nouns as determiners:

This coffee is nice.Bu kahve güzel.
ThoseIN SIGHT cats are small.Şu kediler küçük.
Those dogs are very big.O köpekler çok büyük.

Note that if we use demonstratives as determiners in front of nouns, the demonstrative is always in its singular form, regardless of whether the noun is singular or plural.

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