Personal Pronouns in Turkish
Personal Pronouns (ben, sen, o...)
Turkish has six personal pronouns (ben, sen, o, biz, siz, onlar); subject pronouns are usually dropped because verbs encode person.
Turkish possesses six personal pronouns (şahıs zamirleri): ben (I), sen (you, singular informal), o (he / she / it), biz (we), siz (you, plural or formal singular), and onlar (they). Turkish has no grammatical gender whatsoever; the pronoun o stands equally for masculine, feminine, and neuter referents.
Because Turkish is a classic pro-drop (pronoun-dropping) language, subject pronouns are generally omitted in unmarked sentences. Verbal personal suffixes already mark person and number unambiguously: Gidiyorum means 'I am going' without needing Ben. Including the subject pronoun adds contrastive emphasis or thematic focus: Ben gidiyorum, sen kalıyorsun ('I am leaving, but you are staying').
When inflected with case suffixes, pronouns exhibit two notable irregularities: the dative forms of ben and sen mutate their vowels to bana (to me) and sana (to you) instead of bene/sene. The 3rd person pronoun o inserts the pronominal buffer n before all case endings (on-a, on-u, on-da, on-dan, on-un). Learners often overuse subject pronouns in every sentence, creating unnatural, robotic Turkish.
Examples
Sen yarın bizimle tiyatroya gelecek misin?
Will you come to the theatre with us tomorrow?
Bana lütfen o kırmızı kalemi uzatır mısın?
Could you please hand me that red pen?
Biz geçen yıl İstanbul'da çok güzel vakit geçirdik.
We spent a very wonderful time in Istanbul last year.
Onlar her pazar sahilde uzun bir yürüyüş yaparlar.
They take a long walk by the seashore every Sunday.
Related terms
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