Time to build verbs. Turkish verbs are gloriously regular: there is no go/went/gone, no be/am/is/are/was/were, no list of two hundred irregular forms to learn by heart. Take the dictionary form (gelmek, to come), drop -mek or -mak, and start attaching. For what is happening now, attach -yor: gel-i-yor-um, I am coming. The person endings are -um, -sun, nothing, -uz, -sunuz, -lar, and they harmonize. Two mechanical points: a stem ending in a consonant needs a linking vowel (gel → geliyor), and a stem ending in a vowel loses it (bekle → bekliyor). One warning worth repeating: -yor never changes shape, ever. The negative slips in before it: anla-mı-yor-um. And the question rides along afterwards as a separate word: geliyor musun? By the end of this lesson you can describe anything that is happening around you right now.
Ben her sabah evde çay içiyorum.Every morning I drink tea at home. Read the Turkish back to front and you get the English almost word for word.
Ahmet dün akşam bize geldi.Ahmet came to us last night. bize = to us — the direction ending on a pronoun.
Geliyorum.I am coming. gel + i + yor + um. One word, no auxiliary.
Gidiyorsun.You are going. git softens to gid before a vowel.
O çalışıyor.He is working / she is working / it is working. Third person needs no ending and has no gender.
Kitap okuyoruz.We are reading a book. oku ends in a vowel, so it takes -yor directly.
Ne yapıyorsunuz?What are you doing? The polite or plural «you» is -sunuz.
Çocuklar bahçede oynuyorlar.The children are playing in the garden. The -lar is optional here; without it the sentence is equally correct.
Bekliyorum.I am waiting. bekle loses its final e: bekl + i + yor + um.
Türkçe öğreniyorum.I am learning Turkish. Use -yor for what is true in this stretch of your life, not only this second.
Anlamıyorum.I do not understand. The negative -mı sits between the stem and -yor.
Şu anda Türkçe konuşuyoruz.We are speaking Turkish right now. şu anda = at this moment.
Yağmur yağıyor.It is raining — literally «rain rains». Turkish has no dummy «it» to insert.
Beni duyuyor musunuz?Can you hear me? beni = me, and the question word follows as its own word.
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