Tenses

There are 5 fundamental tenses in Turkish. These are:

1. Present simple tense (Geniş zaman)

2. Present continuous tense (Şimdiki zaman)

3. Future tense (Gelecek zaman)

4. Past tense with -di (-di'li geçmiş zaman) --> Regular past tense

5. Past tense with -miş (-miş'li geçmiş zaman) --> Also called the story past tense

In the basic grammar lessons, we will cover the present continuous tense and the future tense. Rest will be covered in the intermediate level lessons.

To start with, let's review some verbs we'll use in the following lessons and their meanings:

gelmek --> to come

gitmek --> to go

okumak --> to read

kapatmak --> to close

koşmak --> to run

aramak --> to call

konuşmak --> to talk

vermek --> to give

kaynamak --> to boil

çalışmak --> to work

yemek --> to eat

beklemek --> to wait

The meaning of tenses are given using some suffixes. There are some important properties common to all these suffixes denoting tense:

• The suffix for tenses is added right after the verb root if the verb is positive, or after the negating suffix if the verb is negative.

• The present tense for of 'to be' comes after the suffix for tense.

  • Therefore, the order becomes: verb root + (negative) + tense + present tense to be

  • This is different only for the regular past tense, where past tense form of to be is used.

2. Future tense (Gelecek zaman)

The suffix for future tense in Turkish is -ecek. There are not two different cases like in English will and is going to. Future tense is always constructed using the suffix -ecek. The uses of the Turkish future tense is just like a union of the uses of will and going to in English.

• To express any action that will take place in the future.

Future tense is used only for verbs, it is not meaningful for nouns and adjectives.

Future tense of a verb is constructed this way:

verb root + (negative) + ecek + present tense to be

When you want to append the suffix -ecek to a verb that ends with a vowel, you add the fusion consonant 'y' between the verb and the suffix to separate the two vowels. Otherwise, just simply add the suffix -ecek. Be careful about the harmony rules though, as always. Let's see how future tense is obtained using some example verbs:

gel-ecek --> gelecek --> he will come

git-ecek-im --> gideceğim --> I will go

oku-ecek-sin --> okuyacaksın --> you will read

kapat-ecek-iz --> kapatacağız --> we will close

koş-ecek-siniz --> koşacaksınız --> you will run (plural you)

ara-ecek-ler --> arayacaklar --> they will call

konuş-me-ecek --> konuşmayacak --> he will not talk

ver-me-ecek-sin --> vermeyeceksin --> you will not give

 

To see the use of future tense with different cases of person, check the following table: