The -yor present: what is happening right now
Good news: Turkish has two present tenses, and the split is one you already make in English without thinking. -yor is your «I am doing» — what is going on right now, or what is true in this stretch of your life. The habitual «I do» is the aorist, and it gets its own chapter later. How to build it. A dictionary verb ends in -mek or -mak (gelmek = to come). Drop -mek/-mak, add -yor, then the person: -um/-üm/-ım/-im = I · -sun/-sün/-sın/-sin = you · (nothing) = he/she/it -uz/-üz/-ız/-iz = we · -sunuz/-sünüz = you (plural) · -lar/-ler = they Three things to watch. 1) If the stem ends in a consonant you need a linking vowel: gel → gel-İ-yor. 2) If it ends in a vowel, that vowel drops: bekle → bekl-i-yor. 3) -yor itself NEVER changes shape — it is the one ending in the language that ignores vowel harmony. Remember it as the exception that proves how regular everything else is. And notice what you do not have to do: there is no «he/she/it» to choose between. One word, o, covers all three. No gender, ever.
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