Where Things Are in Turkish: üstünde, yanında

Turkish has no small word for "on", "under" or "next to". It uses place nouns instead: üst (top), alt (bottom), ön (front), arka (back), yan (side), iç (inside), dış (outside), ara (the space between), karşı (the opposite side). To say where something is, you say whose top or whose side: Kitap masanın üstünde ("the book is on the table", literally "at the table’s top").

Both words are marked. The owner takes -ın, the ending you already know from senin and onun: evin, okulun, and -nın after a vowel: masanın. The place noun takes the third-person ending: üstü, önü, and -sı after a vowel: arkası. The case comes last, after an n: üstünde, arkasında. The owner ending gets its own lesson in İlgi Hâli (-in / -ın / -un / -ün).

The question picks the case, as with burada, buraya and buradan: nerede takes -nda (Kitap masanın üstünde), nereye takes -na (Kitabı masanın üstüne koy), nereden takes -ndan (Kitabı masanın üstünden al). With a pronoun the person ending moves onto the place noun: benim yanımda ("next to me"), senin arkanda ("behind you"), bizim aramızda ("between us").