Lessons · 21 of 24

Pointing and naming

This, that, here, there — and asking what a thing is or who someone is.

Four words do the pointing, and they come in two pairs — one for what is near you, one for what is further off:

• bu — this
• bıla — these
• ol — that — and also he, she, it
• ala — those — and also they

Two of those you have already met as pronouns. ol is "he, she, it" and it is also "that"; ala is "they" and it is also "those". Karachay does not keep the two jobs apart, so pointing at somebody and talking about them use the same word — which is one fewer word to learn, not one more.

What is it?

ne is "what". It takes the to-be ending like any other word, and that ending is the whole question — there is no verb in it anywhere:

• bu nedi? — what is this?
• bıla nedile? — what are these?

The answer is the same shape with a naming word in the middle: bu üydü — "this is a house." Point, name, done. There is no word for "a" and none for "the" either, so üydü is "it is a house", "it is the house", and "it's a house" all at once.

bu nedi? is not a textbook sentence: it turns up a dozen times over in our parallel texts — in fairy tales, in the Gospels, in a play. Beside it the texts have bu ne üydü? "what house is this?" and bu meni üyümdü "this is my house."

Who is that?

kim is "who", and it behaves exactly the same way:

• ol kimdi? — who is that?
• bu kimdi? — who is this?
• ol atamdı — that is my father

Take atam as one word for now — "my father", with the owner living inside it. The owners lesson takes it apart; here it is just a thing you can point at somebody and say. Our texts have the answer almost word for word, with bu for ol: bu meni atamdı — "this is my father."

Notice what is missing from both questions: the little mı that turns a statement into a question. A question word is already the question, so the particle stays away — the questions lesson is where that rule gets its own page.

Here and there

mında is "here" and anda is "there". Look at the end of them: both already carry the at-form ending da, frozen on. They are literally "at-this" and "at-that", which is why neither needs anything else to say where something is:

• ol mında! — he's here!
• oğay, ol anda! — no, he's there!

And they take the to-be endings as readily as a noun does, which gives you a full sentence about where somebody is with no verb in it:

• ol mındadı — he is here
• ala mındadıla — they are here
• mında igidi — it's good here
• anda suwuqdu! — it's cold there!
• anda bek suwuqdu — it's very cold there

Every one of those five is quoted from a real text, and so are andadı and mındadı on their own. If they look familiar it is because the course has been asking you for them for two lessons without ever teaching them: the self-test in pronouns and the simple past wants ala anda zhaşadıla, and the present wants biz mında zhaşaybız. Until this page they lived only in the pointing words bank, which no lesson linked to. Now they have a home.

One last thing, and it is the shape of every sentence on this page: what you are saying about a thing comes last, glued to the word in front of it. bu üydü is this · house-is. ol atamdı is that · my-father-is. mında igidi is here · good-is. English puts "is" in the middle; Karachay puts it on the end, and there is nothing after it.