"Küçük müsünüz?"
Translation:Are you young?
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if the meaning is 'are you young?' why not use 'genç'? I've always taken 'küçük' to mean 'small.'
1518
Aside from meaning "small", "küçük" is also quite commonly used to mean "young" in Turkish when referring to the age of someone. "Onun yaşı küçük" , literally means "He/She is young of age" or simply "He/She is young".
Eg. "Ankara'dakı İlk evimizi hatırlamıyorum çünkü taşındığımızda çok küçüktüm". ("I don't remember our first house in Ankara because we moved when I was very young").
Eg. "Park'taki küçük çocuklar ağaca tırmanıyorlar". ("The young/small children at the park are climbing a tree").
It is, however, equally natural to refer to someone as "genç" (young).
For example:
"Onların oğulu daha çok genç; ilk okula henüz başlamadı". ("Their son is still too young; he hasn't started grade school yet"]
"Gençken, futbol oynardım". (When I was young, I played soccer").
"Genç yaşta keman çalmayı öğrendim." ("I learned to play violin at a young age").
The question particle adheres to four-way vowel harmony (-mi, -mı, -mu, -mü). In the sentence above, as the last vowel of the preceding word is a ü, it means that the question particle uses that vowel (müsünüz).
Another example: Japonca kolay mı? (Is Japanese easy?)
As the last vowel in the word 'kolay' is an a, the question particle takes the dotless i -mı as it conforms to vowel harmony rules.
Other examples: Mutlu musun? (Are you happy?) Yeter mi? (Is it enough?) Gidiyor muyuz? (Are we ready?) Hasta mısınız? (Are you sick?)
Hope this helps!
673
It's referring to the position of your tongue when you're producing these vowels. Maybe this helps: http://www.antimoon.com/how/english-vowel-chart.htm