Lesson 28: Simple Present Tense in Turkish - Part 2: affirmative and negative form- conversation

  
In Lesson 27 we learned how to conjugate verbs in Simple present tense - in Turkish " Geniş zaman" in affermative and negative forms.

In this unit we will focus on the interrogative form and the interrogative- negative form as well as the use of a special letter  -the Turkish Ğ- also known as "Yumuşak ge".

There is no audio conversation in this lesson as it is part of  Simple Present.You can refer to Lesson 27 to do listening  practice on Simple Present use.


To obtain the interrogative form we have to take as a base the 3rd person singular of the Simple present tense, then make it follow by one of  interrogative particles   -mi  -mı  -mu  -mü, which is not appended to the verb but its choice occurs according to the vowel harmony rule, so depending on the dominant (final) vowel of the base.
The third and last step is to attach to the interrogative particles the personal suffixes bearing in mind also in this case the vowel harmony for the chiuce of the appropriate suffixes.

A few examples will help better understand:

Gitmek: To go

Stem:             Gider   ( Simple present tense 3rd person singular)

Note: the letter "t" of the infinitive base mutates into " d " for eufonic reasons.This rule applies whenever an infinitive root ends in t.

Interrogative particle :  mi  ( final vowel of "gider" is "e")

Now let's append the personal suffixes and the interrogative form is done!

Do I go? :                           Gider miyim?
Do you go?:                       Gider  misin?
Does she, he,it go?:           Gider mi?
Do we go?:                        Gider miyiz?
Do you go?:                       Gider misiniz?
Do they go?:                      Giderler mi?

Quite easy, isn't it?

You can try with other verbs always bearing in mind the grammatical key rules which play a fundamental role in the conjugation of this tense.

Let's move on and let's see how to build the interrogative-negative form.

It's not that difficult!
We have to consider now the negative form of the simpl present tense
You have to pick now the negative particle    -MEZ  or   -MAZ  and repeat the same steps we followed for the interrogative form.
Only exception here is the fact that the interrogative particle will be   -mi   or  -mı  depending on the negative particle .

Let's  do an example:

Okumak:  To read

Stem:   Okumaz    ( Simple present tense 3rd person singular negative form)

Again, lets attach the personal suffixes as follows:

Don't I read?                          Okumaz mıyım?
Don't you read?                     Okumaz  mısın?
Doesn't he,she read?              Okumaz  mı?
Don't we read?                       Okumaz mıyız?
Don't you read?                      Okumaz mısınız?
Don't they read?                     Okumazlar mı?

Conjugate the following verbs in Simple present tense affirmative/negative/interrogative and interrogative-negative form:

Uyumak - Kalmak - Görmek - Yazmak - Gelmek

                                            ~~~~~~~~THE LETTER  Ğ ~~~~~~~~~~

This letter is unique and you won't meet it other than in Turkish. The letter ğ represents different sounds in different positions.
The value of this letter also known as "Yumuşak ge" depends on its position in the word.

When ğ occurs in a syllable with front  vowels "i" and "e", the resulting sound is equivalent to "y".

Examples:

Iğne       /iyne/      needle

Değil    / deyil/     not


When ğ occurs in a syllable with front rounded or with back vowels it produces a hiatus between the vowels, as in the following examples:

Sağa      /sa-a/    to the right

Ağaç     /a-aç/    tree