Hello again. Past Tense or Geçmiş Zaman in Turkish looks a little complicated. We use simply -idi suffix for simple past tense; but we never use it apart, it is turned into a suffix and it becomes -di.

Of course that suffix changes according to Vowel Harmony and because of its first character is a consonant, it also changes according to the structure of last consonants of verb stems.

Let´s see this with a table:

Last Vowel / Last Consonant      Soft Consonant       Hard Consonant (p, ç, t, k, ş, h, f, s)

a, ı                                            -dı                         -tı

e, i                                            -di                         -ti

o, u                                           -du                        -tu

ö, ü                                           -dü                        -tü

When we want to put one of these suffixes, we follow these steps;

1) We look at the LAST consonant of verb stem. We look if it is hard or soft consonant. If verb stem is ending by a vowel, then we use accept it as soft consonant and we use the conjugations of -di.

2) Then we look at the last vowel; according to the last vowel, we select one of the suffixes in the table above.

This kind of past tense is called "Geçmiş Zamanın Hikayesi" (Story Mood of Past Tense) and we used it for "seen past". We use this structure for the past that we have personally seen.

Let´s start with an example.

Yapmak means to do, as you know. Verb stem is yap.

Stem ends by a ´hard consotant´ (p) and its last vowel is ´a´. When we look at the table we see that we should use "-tı" suffix.

Yap + tı : He/she/it did.

This is also Main Form for Past Tense.

Görmek means to see. Stem is gör.

It ends by ´r´ and it is a soft consonant; last vowel is ´ö´. According to the table, we should choose -dü.

Gör + dü : He/she/it saw.

Kapatmak means "to close"; ends by a hard consonant (t) and its last vowel is "a". From the table; we are going to put -tı.

Kapat + tı : He/she/it closed.

Okumak means to read. It ends by a vowel (u) and it is also last vowel. Because of stem ends by a vowel, we accept as it ends by soft consonant. From the table, we choose -du.

Oku + du : He/she/it read.

Yemek means to eat, stem is "ye".

Ye + di : He/she/it ate.

Aramak means to look for, stem is "ara"

Ara + dı : He/she/it looked for.

Let´s do it for some other verbs:

Bilmek > Bildi

Gitmek > Gitti

Duymak > Duydu

Giymek > Giydi

Yazmak > Yazdı

Çizmek > Çizdi

Anlatmak > Anlattı

Anlamak > Anladı

Öğrenmek > Öğrendi

Bakmak > Baktı

Konuşmak > Konuştu

Bağırmak > Bağırdı

Kesmek > Kesti

Sevmek > Sevdi

Almak > Aldı

Vermek > Verdi

Çıkmak > Çıktı

Girmek > Girdi

İzlemek > İzledi

thx

turkishcobra //