# Negative questions



## Xander2024

Hello everyone,

I'm quite confused as to where to put the affix "ler" in negative questions. One of my textbooks says: "Onlar genç değil *mi(dirler)*?" According to another, it should be: "Zengin değil*ler* mi?" Does it depend on whether we're talking about animate or inanimate objects or is there no difference?


Thanks in advance.


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## Rallino

Are you having a trouble about *where* to put it or *whether or not* you should put it? I'm asking because you put the first one in parentheses.

If it is _where_ you're curious about, you can say: _Onlar genç değiller mi? _or if you have the -dir: _Onlar genç değil midirler__? _However, this second one doesn't mean the same thing, as you have a -dir. 

If you want to know whether or not the _-ler _is used, the grammar says that you should always use it as long as the subject is a humanbeing, otherwise it shouldn't be used. However, in real life, things are different. The tendency is that, so long as you have the pronoun _onlar_ present in your sentence, you can forget about _-ler_, as the meaning is clear. If _onlar_ is hidden, we use _-ler_ to differentiate it from the third person singular.


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## Xander2024

The parentheses in the first sentence is how it is written in my textbook. They mean to say that the "-dirler" part can be omitted. Actually I'm confused about where the "-ler" affix should go. If both "_Onlar genç değiller mi_?" and "_Onlar genç değil midirler_?" are possible, but as you say they don't mean the same, what's the difference then? Don't they both mean "Aren't they young?"  

Çok teşekkürler.


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## Rallino

Well, the difference is this: when you say 'onlar genç değil midirler?', you're rather unsure. So it equates to 'Do you think they're not young?'


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## Xander2024

Rather a slight difference, değil mi? I can't for the life of me get the feel of it. Do you think it would be much of an error to assume the two sentences are almost the same? For a beginner, at least.

Yardımınız için çok teşekkür ederim.


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## Rallino

For a beginner, of course. 
A lot of learners make mistakes in using _-dir_, _aorist tense_ and the _-miş_. And from what I've noticed, a few minutes into the conversation, native speakers start seeing these 'error patterns' and the initial confusion disappears. So don't sweat too much at this stage.


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## Esoppe

Apart from the uncertainty meaning Rallino mentioned, -midir can also be used to add a more formal (and somewhat outdated) tone to the question, which is sometimes used in cases where the question is directed at a (large) group of people. I think your "genç değil midirler" example sounds more like it has this second meaning (I am not sure, but I think this might even be the original meaning of -dir inside a question; because "-dir" is a suffix that indicates certainty rather than uncertainty. The uncertainty meaning must have developed afterwards in colloquial speech).

If the -dir is used with this meaning, the slight difference between the two sentences becomes as below:

"Onlar genç değil(ler) mi?" -> "Aren't they young?" (informal)
"Onlar genç değil midir(ler)?" - > "Are they not young?" (formal, more vocative) (and occasionally, more of a rhetoric question, i.e. begging the answer "of course they are young!")

But this usage is pretty rare, so maybe it's best to forget about it. 
Oh, and the sentence I tagged as 'informal' is just informal compared to the -midir version below it. It can actually be used in formal environments.


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## Xander2024

Thank you so much for the help, Esoppe. I hope the matter becomes clearer as I move on.


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