Lesson 13 — Dün sinemadaydım: the past tense, cinema and -ki

1Dün geldim: the past tense

Let’s start with a confession: you’ve been using the past tense since Lesson 1. Memnun oldum — “nice to meet you” — is literally “I became pleased”. Oldum is olmak, “to be, to become”, in the past. And in Lesson 7 you sang İyi ki doğdun and took it whole. Today we open it up, and from now on you build these yourself.

This is the past for things you’re sure of — you saw it, or you did it. “I came”, “I have come”, “I did come” — in Turkish it’s one word. There’s a second past as well, the “apparently…” one, but that’s five lessons off.

The recipe: the verb stem, then -dı, then “who”. Harmony works in four teams, like mı. And after the hard consonants of Fıstıkçı Şahap the d turns into a t — exactly as -da turned into -ta in Lesson 2. You can do all of this already; it’s just in a new place.

Now for “who”. The endings are short, and you’ll recognise three of them: -m, -n and -nız are Lesson 7’s “my, your, your” endings, as in evim, evin, eviniz. “He” and “she” get nothing. Only “we” has its own: -k. And “they” is the usual -lar.

Two things that misbehaved in Lesson 4 behave themselves here. Gitmek: there the t turned into a d before a vowel — gidiyorum. Here a consonant follows, so the t stays: gittim. And yemek and demek, with their yiyor and diyor, are perfectly ordinary in the past: yedim, dedim.

The past needs time words. Dün is “yesterday”, dün akşam “last night”. Geçen is “last”: it’s Lesson 5’s geçmek, “the week that has gone by”. Az önce is “just now” — literally “a little before”.

And two promises it’s time to keep. In Lesson 6, önce after a length of time meant “ago”, but you couldn’t make a whole sentence with it: there was no past. Now there is. And İyi ki doğdun is doğmak, “to be born” — the one that gave Lesson 9 doğu, the east: doğ + du + n, “so glad you were born”.

And a question you’ll hear every day: Ne oldu? — “What happened?”

2Gelmedim. Geldin mi?

The negative is the same -ma/-me as in Lesson 4, between the stem and the -dı. A vowel always comes before the -dı then, so there’s never a t, and only two teams are left: -madı, -medi.

And the phrase that will get you out of trouble more than any other: Anlamadım — “I didn’t understand”. Add Bir daha, lütfen — “once more, please” — and you can ask anyone to say it again. There’s no shame in it; everyone does.

The question is where the past parts ways with -yor. In Lesson 5 it was geliyor musun — “who” came after the mu. Here it’s the other way round: “who” grows onto the verb, and mı stands at the very end, on its own, stuck to nothing.

Turks answer with the verb rather than a yes: Yedin mi? — Yedim. You can add evet, but the verb is what matters.

And the negative question — the same as in Lesson 5, with the same surprise: gelmedin mi? — “didn’t you come?”. With hiç it means “never”.

3Sinema: the cinema

Now that you can say what happened, here’s something to say it about. The cinema is sinema, a film is film — you’ve known that since the alphabet in Lesson 1. A TV series is a dizi, and it gets a whole conversation of its own later on. Dizi means “a row, a string”: episodes following one another. An episode is a bölüm, “a part”.

To watch is izlemek or seyretmek; either will do. And straight into the past:

A genre is a tür. Korku filmi is a horror film: korku is “fear”, from Lesson 5’s korkmak. Aşk is “love” — the romantic kind — and aşk filmi a love story. Macera is “adventure”. Belgesel is a documentary. And a cartoon is çizgi film, “a film made of lines”: çizgi is “a line”. Komedi and dram need no translating.

For “I like” we’ll use Lesson 5’s hoşlanmak for now — with the “from” case:

Who makes a film. Oyuncu is an actor: oyun, “a game, a play”, plus -cu, like Lesson 10’s pazarcı. Turkish actors “play”, just as in English — Lesson 4’s oynamak. Yönetmen is the director.

And at the cinema itself. Bilet is a ticket, seans a showing, salon the screen room, sıra a row, koltuk a seat. Popcorn is patlamış mısır, “popped corn”: patlamış is a Lesson 18 form, so take it whole. Mısır is “maize, corn” — and with a capital, Mısır, it’s Egypt. Altyazılı means “subtitled”: Lesson 9’s alt, yazı from yazmak, and last lesson’s -lı. Dubbed is dublajlı.

4Film nasıldı? The past without a verb

In Lesson 1 you found that Turkish doesn’t need “to be”: the ending sits right on the word — hastayım, “I’m ill”. The past works the same way. No “was” — the -dı goes straight onto the noun or adjective, with “who” after it.

After a consonant, just -dı. After a vowel, a y steps in — the same one as in hastayım. After Fıstıkçı Şahap, a t. And the endings are the verb’s: -m, -n, nothing, -k, -nız, -lar.

A place goes into the past just as happily: evdeyim is “I’m at home”, evdeydim “I was at home”. And Lesson 6’s Neredesin? becomes Neredeydin? — “where were you?”.

And Lesson 2’s var and yok become vardı and yoktu — “there was” and “there wasn’t”. With an ending, yok means “I wasn’t there”: yoktum.

The negative is değil plus -di: değildim, değildin, değildi.

In a question, mı and -dı stick together into one word, with a y between them: mıydı, miydi, muydu, müydü. It sounds like a tongue-twister — say it out loud three times, and after that it comes on its own.

And the question words: nasıl → nasıldı?, kim → kimdi?, ne → neydi?

5Masadaki, dünkü, benimki: the suffix -ki

In Lesson 11 we put one phrase aside — Filmdeki en … — for today. Here it is. -ki turns “where” and “when” into “which one”: not “on the table” but “the one on the table”. And it hardly ever changes: no vowel harmony, one form for everything.

Its first home is after the locative. Masada is “on the table”; masadaki is “the one on the table”.

Its second home is after time words: akşam → akşamki, yarın → yarınki, önce → önceki, sonra → sonraki. And here’s the only exception: dün and bugün take -kü — dünkü, bugünkü.

And its third home, the chattiest one, is after “whose”. Benim is “my”; benimki is “mine”, with the thing left out because everyone knows what it is. The same goes for seninki, onunki, bizimki, sizinki, onlarınki — and with any name: Ayşe’ninki.

7Dialogue: a very scary film

Morning. Ayşe dropped by Can’s last night, but he wasn’t in. It turns out he was at the cinema — on his own, at a horror film. Let’s see what he remembers of it.

Hoşlanmıyorsun with hiç is strong: “don’t like at all” — “can’t stand”. Günaydın, “good morning”, is from Lesson 1.

8Reading

Last lesson Sevim teyze brought Deniz soup when he was ill — in a bowl, because the plate is still in İzmir — and told him the bowl mustn’t come back empty. Deniz is better now. It’s Thursday, and on Thursdays Sevim teyze has her dizi. The story opens the way every episode does.

Soru is a question, sormak is to ask, adam is a man, ağlamak is to cry. Sus! — “hush!” — is from susmak, “to go quiet”. Uyumak is to sleep, uyanmak to wake up.

9The lesson’s new words

Everything new from today, in the order it turned up. Words with -ki (dünkü, benimki, önceki) and the past-tense forms aren’t here: you build those yourself now. Sinema, film, komedi, dram, seans and salon you’ll recognise anyway.

10Say it yourself

No options here — you build the answer. Read the cue, say it in Turkish out loud, and only then check. Forgot the y, or put a d where the t goes? Great: that’s exactly the miss that makes it stick.

11Check yourself

Six items: the cinema, the past on a verb and on a word, the question and -ki. A miss still shows you the right answer, so there’s no shame in guessing.

12Homework

Today you’ve finally got a past — so tell it. Everything out loud.