Hello friends. In this lesson, I´m going to talk about "-miş" past tense; which is a little complicated and does not have CLEAR respond in English.

In Turkish, if we ´personally´ saw an event in Past, we use Story Mood. If we heard the event in Past from someone, we use -miş. First, let´s see the structure and then I´m going to try to make it clear with examples:

Last Vowel   Suffix Form

e, i               -miş

a, ı               -mış

o, u              -muş

ö, ü              -müş

Yapmış, Okumuş, Yemiş, Vermiş, Görmüş, Yazmış, Anlatmış, İçmiş .... etc.

It is an easy structure without too many changable-forms. Now, let me tell how we use it:

Imagine that A and B are two people and they are sitting in a cafeteria; drinking tea and waiting for their friend C to come there. They have been waiting for him. And A decides to call C to "ask where are you?" 

A: Neredesin? (Where are you? Used as "nerdesin" in daily speech)

C: Evdeyim (I am at home)

A learnt that C went home; without informing them. So A "heard" that C went home, A did not SEE C´S GOING PERSONALLY.

A ends the talk and tells to B:

Eve gitmiş : He went home (I heard but didn´t see)

In this dialogue A and B were waiting for C but they learnt (by hearing) that C went home.

Let me explain it with another example;

Onu markette görmüş : (He said that) He saw her in the market.

(O) Her şeyi öğrenmiş: He had learnt everything. (I heard that he knows everything)

Konuşmalarımızı duymuş: She had heard all we have told (I heard that she heard our dialogues, or, she said that she has heard what we told).

Small Note:

Konuşma: dialogue, chat.

Konuşma + lar + (ı)mız + ı: to our dialogues; +lar is plural suffix, (ı)mız is relative suffix for "biz" pronoun and +ı is accusative form suffix for "duymak" verb.

Another example; you turn on the TV and see a breaking news and it says "Earthquake in X"

Your friend asks you:

"What´s up?" Ne olmuş?

"A fire had broke up in X (or, TV says, fire in X)" : X´te yangın çıkmış.

Another example:

A friend of you from Istanbul, X, goes to Antalya for vacation by plane. You and Y have taken X to airport and then returned home back. Some minutes later X calls you:

You: What happened? Ne oldu?

X: I missed the plane. Uçağı kaçırdım. (Direct speech)

X ends the call. Y asks you;

What happened? Ne olmuş?

You: X had missed plane; X said he missed plane. X uçağı kaçırmış.

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It may seem complicated but actually it is easy. Next chapter, I´m going to tell you about the negative and question forms of this structure and then give some examples for you understand it better.

thx

turkishcobra //