Turkish Cases Explained: All Six in One Table, with Pronouns and Examples

What is a case in Turkish?

A case is an ending on a noun that shows what the noun is doing in the sentence: who acts, what is acted on, where, where to, where from, whose. English does most of that with word order and with small words such as in, to and from. Turkish puts an ending on the noun instead. Ev is house, evde is in the house, eve is to the house and evden is from the house.

This article counts six cases: the bare noun and five endings. The nominative is the bare noun, and it names the subject. The accusative marks a definite object. The dative says where something is going or who receives it. The locative says where something is. The ablative says where something comes from. The genitive names the owner.

Grammars differ in what they count. Some list five case suffixes and treat the bare noun as unmarked, not as a case; this article counts it as the first of six. A case ending follows the plural and the possessive, so evlerde is in the houses and evimde is in my house.

The six Turkish cases in one table

The table gives each case with its Turkish name, its suffix, the questions it answers and three nouns: ev (house), araba (car) and kitap (book). The three were chosen for how they end. Ev ends in a voiced consonant, araba in a vowel and kitap in p, and each of those brings out a different rule.

The capital letters in a suffix stand for sounds that change with the word. A is e or a. I is ı, i, u or ü. D is d or t. A letter in brackets is a buffer, which appears when the noun ends in a vowel.

A follows two-way vowel harmony: e after a front vowel (e, i, ö, ü) and a after a back vowel (a, ı, o, u), as in evde and arabada. I follows four-way harmony, which also matches the rounding of the last vowel: evi, kitabı, okulu, gözü. A companion article on this blog, The Turkish Suffix System Explained, sets out both kinds of harmony and the loanwords that break them.

Turkish grammars name a case with either of two words, hâl and durum. The table uses the names with hâl, as Dilsever’s lessons do. The TDK dictionary defines the same cases under durum, so its entry yönelme hâli points to yönelme durumu.

Nominative: the bare noun

The nominative has no ending. It is the form a dictionary lists, and it is the form of the subject: Annem evde (my mother is at home), Çocuklar bahçede oynuyor (the children are playing in the garden).

The bare form also serves for an object that is not a specific one. Kitap okuyorum means I am reading a book, any book, and çay istiyorum means I want tea. Nothing is missing from those sentences. An ending on the object would change the meaning, as the next section shows.

A subject pronoun is usually left out, because the ending on the verb already names the person. So a sentence can have no nominative word at all: Okula gidiyorum, I am going to school.

Accusative: the definite object

The accusative, -(y)I, marks a direct object that is definite: a specific thing that the speaker and the listener both have in mind. Kitap okuyorum is I am reading a book. Kitabı okuyorum is I am reading the book. The ending does for an object the job of the English word the.

Its vowel follows four-way harmony: adamı, evi, okulu, gözü. After a vowel it takes the buffer y: arabayı, kediyi, kapıyı.

A name or a personal pronoun is definite by nature, so as an object it carries the ending: Ali’yi gördüm (I saw Ali), seni bekliyorum (I am waiting for you). A noun after bu, şu or o is definite as well: bu kitabı, this book.

The error to avoid is adding the ending where no specific thing is meant. Her sabah çay içiyorum, I drink tea every morning, has a bare object. That is the rule as A1 needs it. There are further conditions under which an object that is not definite takes the ending too, for instance when it carries a possessive suffix or does not stand directly before the verb.

Dative: to, toward

The dative, -(y)A, answers nereye (where to) and kime (to whom). It marks the place a movement ends at, with verbs such as gitmek (to go) and gelmek (to come): Okula gidiyorum (I am going to school), Akşam eve geliyorum (I am coming home in the evening).

It also marks the person who is given something or told something, with verbs such as vermek (to give) and söylemek (to say): Kitabı Ali’ye verdim, I gave the book to Ali. That sentence has two cases. The book is the definite object, and Ali is the receiver.

The vowel is e or a by two-way harmony: eve, okula. After a vowel the buffer y comes first: arabaya, bahçeye. A final p, ç, t or k usually softens before it, as in kitaba, ağaca and sokağa. Two pronouns are irregular here: ben gives bana and sen gives sana.

Locative: in, on, at

The locative, -DA, says where something is. One ending covers the English words in, on and at: evde (at home), okulda (at school), masada (on the table).

Its vowel is e or a by two-way harmony. Its consonant is d, which becomes t after a voiceless consonant: kitapta, derste, sokakta, işte. There are eight of those consonants, f, s, t, k, ç, ş, h and p, and the phrase fıstıkçı şahap holds them all.

The locative gives the place in sentences with var and yok: Masada kitap var (there is a book on the table), Evde kimse yok (nobody is at home). The place comes first, then the thing, then var or yok.

On a person it says who has something with them: Anahtar kimde? Bende. (Who has the key? I do.) The ending is not the separate word de, which means too: Ben de geldim, I came too.

Ablative: from, out of

The ablative, -DAn, says where something comes from or comes out of: İstanbul’dan geldim (I came from İstanbul), Okuldan çıkıyoruz (we are leaving school). It answers nereden (where from) and kimden (from whom).

It looks like the locative with an n added, and it changes in the same two ways: evden and okuldan by harmony, kitaptan, işten and sınıftan after a voiceless consonant. One letter separates evde, at home, from evden, from home.

The ablative also marks what you are afraid of and what you compare with: köpekten korkuyorum (I am afraid of the dog), senden uzun (taller than you). It is the case before sonra (after) too: Dersten sonra eve gittim, I went home after class.

The pronouns are regular in this case: benden, senden, ondan.

Genitive: of, the owner

The genitive, -(n)In, marks the owner: Ali’nin evi (Ali’s house), öğrencinin kitabı (the student’s book). It answers kimin, whose.

The owner is only half of the construction. The thing owned takes a possessive ending, so the pair is marked twice: in evin kapısı, the door of the house, ev has -in and kapı has -sı. Ali’nin ev, with the second ending missing, is incomplete.

The vowel follows four-way harmony (kızın, evin, okulun, gözün), and after a vowel the buffer is n, not y: arabanın, kapının. The pronouns ben and biz have m in place of n: benim, bizim. One noun is irregular, su (water), which gives suyun.

On its own at the end of a sentence, the genitive says whose something is: Bu çanta kimin? Ayşe’nin. (Whose bag is this? Ayşe’s.) Note that evin is also your house, with the possessive ending for sen, and the sentence tells the two apart.

Dilsever teaches the genitive at A2, after the possessive endings it depends on. Its lesson is in the app, not among the free A1 lessons on this site.

Buffer letters and consonant changes

Turkish does not let two vowels meet where a suffix joins a word. When the noun ends in a vowel and the ending begins with one, a buffer consonant goes between them. The accusative and the dative take y: arabayı, arabaya. The genitive takes n: arabanın. The locative and the ablative begin with a consonant and need nothing: arabada, arabadan.

A noun with a third-person possessive ending behaves differently. Evi, which is also the accusative of ev, here means his or her house, and arabası is his or her car. Before each of the five case endings they add n, including the two that begin with a consonant: evinde (in his house), arabasından (from his car). The forms evide and arabasıda are wrong. The table below has all ten forms.

A final p, ç, t or k usually softens to b, c, d or ğ before an ending that begins with a vowel. Kitap gives kitabı, kitaba and kitabın, and çocuk gives çocuğu. Most one-syllable words keep their consonant (topu, atı), and a few common ones soften anyway (çoğu, kabı, kurdu).

The ending can change as well. After a voiceless consonant the d of the locative and the ablative is t: kitapta, kitaptan. The two changes do not apply together. A vowel softens the word and leaves the ending alone (kitabı), and a d hardens in the ending and leaves the word alone (kitapta).

A proper name is written with an apostrophe before the ending, and its own spelling does not change: Ankara’ya, İstanbul’da, Ahmet’i, Zeynep’e.

The personal pronouns in every case

The six personal pronouns take the same five endings as nouns. A few forms are irregular and have to be learned as they are.

The dative of ben is bana and the dative of sen is sana, not bene and sene. These are the only two forms in the table where the vowel of the pronoun itself changes.

The genitive of ben is benim and the genitive of biz is bizim, with m where the other pronouns have n: senin, onun, sizin, onların.

The pronoun o takes its endings on the stem on-: onu, ona, onda, ondan, onun. Turkish has no separate words for he and she, so each of these forms covers him, her and it.

A pronoun object is definite, so it is in the accusative: seni bekliyorum, onu tanıyorum (I know him). The genitive forms are the ones that stand before a possessed noun: benim evim, my house.

Verbs that ask for a case

Many Turkish verbs ask for a particular case on the noun that goes with them. Korkmak and hoşlanmak are two of them: it is the verb that settles which case ending appears. The case therefore has to be learned together with the verb, the way a learner of English memorises afraid of and wait for.

Binmek (to get on), başlamak (to start) and bakmak (to look at) take the dative: otobüse bindim, derse başladık, bana bak. Korkmak (to be afraid of) and hoşlanmak (to like) take the ablative.

Sevmek (to love) and beklemek (to wait for) take a direct object, which is in the accusative when it is definite. Oturmak, in its sense of living somewhere, takes the locative.

The translation is a poor guide. In English you wait for someone and are afraid of something, and neither preposition predicts the Turkish case. The dative lesson puts the advice in one line: do not guess the ending from the translation.

Is there a seventh case?

Some descriptions of Turkish add a seventh case, for with and by. It is built with ile, which is a separate word (araba ile, by car) and in everyday speech a suffix: otobüsle (by bus), kalemle (with a pen), arabayla (by car).

The suffixed form looks like a case ending. It follows two-way harmony and takes the buffer y after a vowel. The TDK dictionary has an entry for this case, araç durumu, and defines it as formed with the postposition ile or its suffixed form.

Other grammars do not count it as a case, and describe -(y)lA as a marker that shares some properties with the case suffixes. A learner can see two differences. The word ile can stand on its own, and with a personal pronoun it attaches to the genitive form: benimle (with me), onunla (with him or her). Only onlar stays plain, in onlarla.

The form is the same however a grammar counts it. Dilsever teaches ile as an A1 lesson of its own, and it is linked under this article beside the four case lessons.

If you already know cases, or prepositions

What you bring from another language decides which part of this system is new. Two comparisons follow, one for readers who know Russian and one for readers who know Arabic.

Russian has six cases as well, and four of them share their names with Turkish cases: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. The endings work differently. A Russian noun takes its ending according to gender, number and declension class. Turkish has no grammatical gender and no declension classes. Each of the five endings is a single suffix, the same in the singular and the plural, and only its sounds adjust to the word: evde, okulda, kitapta, evlerde.

Where Russian uses a preposition with a case, Turkish often uses the case alone. В школе (at school) is okulda, из школы (from school) is okuldan, and в школу (to school) is okula, where the dative gives the direction. The accusative draws a line that Russian endings do not, between a book and the book. And in a possessive pair Russian names the owner second (дом Али), while Turkish names the owner first and marks both words: Ali’nin evi.

For an Arabic speaker the same jobs sit in a different place. The locative, the dative and the ablative do the work of the prepositions في (in), إلى (to) and من (from), as endings after the noun: evde, eve, evden. The one locative ending also covers على (on) and عند (at).

Arabic puts every direct object in the accusative, definite or not. Turkish marks the definite one, so its accusative ending corresponds to ال on the object more than to the Arabic case. The genitive pair is the counterpart of the إضافة with the order reversed: Arabic says بيت علي, with the owned thing first, and Turkish says Ali’nin evi, with the owner first and an ending on each word.

How to practise the Turkish cases

Each of the four A1 cases has a free lesson on this site: the locative, the dative, the ablative and the accusative. They are linked under this article, with the lessons on buffer letters, consonant softening, the personal pronouns and ile. Each lesson has the rule, form tables and example sentences.

The lessons come in that order, and it is a good order to study in. The first three cases answer where, where to and where from, and their forms differ by a letter or two: evde, eve, evden. The accusative comes after them.

In the Dilsever app each of the five case endings has a drill in the Suffix Lab and a mastery check at the end of its lesson. The genitive is taught there at A2.