UNIT 04 · LESSON 9
Asking questions
Find out who, what, and where.
By the end of this lessonAsk basic questions using kî, çi, and li ku.
The idea
A Kurmanji question word simply takes the place of the missing information; the rest of the sentence keeps its normal word order. Kî asks “who”, çi asks “what”, and li ku asks “where”. The to-be endings you already know still apply: çi and ku end in a vowel, so they take the vowel-final forms yî and ye.
See it in a sentence
Tu kî yî?Who are you?
Ew çi ye?What is that?
Tu li ku yî?Where are you?
Ew li ku ye?Where is he / she?
You do not need to change the word order to ask a question — just put the question word where the answer would go.
Grammar reference: Thackston, Interrogatives