Turkish Aorist Tense: The -Ir / -Ar Suffix Explained
How the Turkish aorist works — the low vowel a/e that most short verbs take, the high vowel of the fixed set gelir and görür, the four-way harmony, the -maz negative with its odd first person, and using it for habits, general truths and offers.
Ekle ·
The aorist is the tense of habits, general truths and willingness — what someone does as a rule, what is always so, and what a speaker will readily offer to do.
What the aorist does
The aorist reports what holds in general rather than what is under way at this moment. gelir is "he comes" — as a rule, as a habit — not "he is coming" this minute. It is the form you reach for to state a routine, a standing fact, or a ready willingness to act.
Three kinds of meaning ride on this one tense: a habit you repeat, a truth that is always so, and an offer or willingness to do something. koşarım can mean "I run" as a matter of habit or "I'll run" as a cheerful offer, and both are the aorist at work.
Which vowel the stem takes
Most one-syllable verbs ending in a consonant take a low vowel, a or e. bak "look" gives bakar and yaz "write" gives yazar. This is the default aorist for that group, and it is the one to assume when nothing tells you otherwise.
A small, fixed group of common one-syllable verbs takes a high vowel instead. gel "come" gives gelir, and our own verb gör "see" gives görür. Nothing in the sound of the verb predicts membership; the set is learned by heart, and it is spelled out lower down.
Verbs of more than one syllable, and verbs that end in a vowel, take the high vowel too — shrinking to a bare r straight after a vowel. çalış "work" gives çalışır, oku "read" gives okur, and kayna "boil" gives kaynar.
How the high vowel harmonises
When the aorist vowel is high, it harmonises four ways with the last vowel of the stem, matching both its front-back quality and its rounding. The grid pairs each stem-vowel class with the ending it forces.
| Last stem vowel | Ending | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a · ı | -ır | çalışır |
| e · i | -ir | gelir |
| o · u | -ur | okur |
| ö · ü | -ür | görür |
So a stem with a or ı takes -ır, as in çalışır; one with e or i takes -ir, as in gelir; one with o or u takes -ur, as in okur; and one with ö or ü takes -ür, as in görür. The consonant r never changes; only the vowel in front of it moves.
The person endings
The person endings come after the aorist vowel — the same pronominal set the present continuous uses. koş "run" gives koşar "he runs", and "I run" adds the first-person ending on top: koşarım.
A full word runs stem + aorist + person, as in görürüm "I see" and görürsün "you see". Every other person fills the same slot, and the complete conjugation is generated as the paradigm.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| koşarım | koş + ar + ım | I run |
Four worked forms
Read each of these as a general statement — what someone does as a rule, not what is happening as you speak.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| bakar | bak + ar | he looks / he watches |
| gelir | gel + ir | he comes |
| görür | gör + ür | he sees |
| okur | oku + r | he reads |
Aorist versus the present continuous
Turkish keeps the habit and the moment apart. The aorist koşarım means "I run" as a habit — every day, in general. The present continuous koşuyorum means "I am running" right now, this instant. English folds both into "I run"; Turkish does not, so choosing the aorist is choosing to talk about the rule and not the moment.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| koşarım | koş + ar + ım | I run (as a habit), not I am running |
Habits and routines
The commonest use is the habitual — what happens again and again. Add a time phrase such as her gün "every day" and the aorist names a settled routine: her gün koşarım is "I run every day". On its own, gelir already reads as "he comes" in the sense of "as a rule".
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| koşarım | koş + ar + ım | I run (as a habit) |
| gelir | gel + ir | he comes (regularly) |
General truths
The aorist also states what is always true — scientific fact, permanent property. su yüz derecede kaynar is "water boils at a hundred degrees", a truth that holds regardless of any particular moment; the bare verb is kaynar "it boils".
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| kaynar | kayna + r | it boils |
Offers and willingness
In questions and first-person statements the aorist carries willingness — an offer, or a polite readiness. bir çay içer misiniz is "would you like to drink a tea?", a genuine offer rather than a report, and ben yaparım "I'll do it" signals a ready hand. On its own, içer is again the habitual "he drinks".
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| içer | iç + er | he drinks |
The negative has its own shape
The negative aorist is not the positive with a separate "not" bolted on — it carries its own suffix, a form in -maz or -mez. gel "come" gives gelmez "he doesn't come", and bak gives bakmaz "he doesn't look".
The first person then breaks even that pattern. "I don't come" is gelmem, with no z at all, and "we don't come" is gelmeyiz. Building the first person on -mez to get gelmezim is the error to avoid: the singular drops the z and ends in plain m.
- gelmez — "he doesn't come", and likewise gelmezsin "you don't", gelmezler "they don't": the -mez form.
- gelmem — "I don't come": the first-person singular drops the z.
- gelmeyiz — "we don't come": the first-person plural has its own ending.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| gelmez | gel + mez | he doesn't come |
| gelmem | gel + me + m | I don't come |
The verbs that take the high vowel
A closed set of very common one-syllable verbs takes the high-vowel ending where the default would give the low one. There is no rule behind the membership; the set is learned as a list. Our lemma gör "see" and its aorist görür belong to it, alongside these:
- almak "take" → alır
- bilmek "know" → bilir
- gelmek "come" → gelir
- görmek "see" → görür
- olmak "be, become" → olur
- kalmak "stay" → kalır
- vermek "give" → verir
A handful more sit in the same group, among them bulur "finds" and durur "stops, stands". Because nothing in the verb signals which vowel it wants, learners often over-apply the low one and produce the wrong geler and görer for gelir and görür; pushing a high vowel the other way onto a low-vowel stem gives the wrong yazır for yazar.
One neighbouring verb shifts by a different route: git "go" voices its final t to d and keeps the low vowel, giving gider "he goes". That is a sound change at the seam, not membership in the high-vowel set.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| gelir | gel + ir | he comes |
| görür | gör + ür | he sees |
Frequently asked questions
- What is the Turkish aorist tense?
- It is the tense of habits, general truths and willingness. gelir means "he comes" as a rule; su yüz derecede kaynar "water boils at a hundred degrees" states a permanent fact; and a first-person form like ben yaparım "I'll do it" offers to act. It reports what holds in general, not what is happening right now.
- What is the difference between koşarım and koşuyorum?
- koşarım is the aorist — "I run" as a habit, something you do regularly or in general. koşuyorum is the present continuous — "I am running" at this very moment. English uses "I run" for both; Turkish marks the habit and the ongoing action with different tenses.
- How do you make the Turkish aorist negative?
- The negative aorist has its own suffix, not a separate word for "not". For most persons it is a form in -maz or -mez: gelmez "he doesn't come", bakmaz "he doesn't look". The first person is different again — "I don't come" is gelmem and "we don't come" is gelmeyiz, so gelmezim is wrong.
- Which verbs take the high vowel in the aorist, like gelir and görür?
- A small, fixed group of common one-syllable verbs does — there is no rule, so they are learned as a set: almak → alır, bilmek → bilir, gelmek → gelir, görmek → görür, olmak → olur, kalmak → kalır. Most other one-syllable verbs take the low vowel instead, as in bakar and yazar.