Greek to Turkmen: distinguish a request for information from a yes-or-no question
Identify what the Greek question asks the listener to supply
The Centre for the Greek Language distinguishes interrogative pronouns used to ask about somebody or something. It lists invariable τι alongside inflected forms for who or which and for how much or how many. A Greek-to-Turkmen translation must retain which information is missing: a person, an item, an amount or confirmation of a proposition.
The Greek reference’s quantity question concerns the cost of a television, while its τι example asks what food is available. These are not invitations to answer only yes or no. A target that merely turns the surrounding proposition into a polar question would be grammatical-looking but would request the wrong kind of response.
Greek interrogative forms can also display grammatical gender and number. Preserve the intended item or quantity without expecting those endings to receive matching pieces in Turkmen. The target’s question construction needs its own morphology, and the presence of a question word is more consequential than copying the visible inflection of the Greek one.
Turkmen question suffixes are not added to every kind of question
The Peace Corps Turkmen grammar guide teaches -my and -mi for polar questions and illustrates Kakaň geldimi?, asking whether your father came. The suffix supplies question marking on the final word in this example. A Greek source seeking confirmation about an arrival can therefore require target morphology even though its question is not built from a corresponding suffix.
The guide explicitly distinguishes questions containing an interrogative word: it gives Sen haçan geldiň? for when you came, without adding the polar suffix. That directly matters for Greek questions asking when, what or where. Do not attach the same ending to every translated question merely because each source sentence ends with question punctuation.
The guide also describes alternative questions with the suffix on the first choice or on both choices. A Greek request to choose between two possibilities should retain the alternatives, rather than being reduced to confirmation of the first one. The relevant decision is the question’s structure, not whether one can find an interrogative-looking ending somewhere in the output.
Short Turkmen questions can already be complete
The Peace Corps introductory lessons give Sen nireden? for asking where someone is from. A Greek source can express this as a full finite clause, but the concise Turkmen question does not require an extra translated copula merely to match its word count. The origin relation is already present in the form of the place question.
The same introductory dialogue uses a short name question and allows a name alone as an answer. Its age exchange likewise supplies a number as a complete conversational reply. When a Greek chat contains these fragments, preserve the dialogue function rather than expanding every answer into a newly invented full statement that repeats the question’s information.
The lessons separately illustrate a family-existence question with polar suffix marking. That contrast brings the distinction back to use: asking someone’s origin requests a place, whereas asking whether they have a family requests confirmation. Greek source wording may differ in length and verbal structure, but a useful Turkmen translation should keep the expected answer type intact.
Language references