Turkish Optative Mood: -eyim, -elim, -e Explained
How the Turkish optative works — the two-way vowel harmony that picks -eyim or -ayım, the -y- buffer after a vowel (okuyayım), the t→d softening in gideyim, and using it for "let me", "let's" and "shall we?" suggestions in the first person.
Ekle ·
The optative is the mood of wishes and first-person suggestions — "let me" do something on my own, and "let's" do it together.
What the optative does
The optative puts a wish or a proposal straight onto the verb, where English needs a whole frame like "let me" or "let's". gideyim is "let me go" and gidelim is "let's go" — one suffix carries what English spreads across two or three words.
In everyday Turkish this mood lives in the first person: gideyim for "let me …" on my own, gidelim for "let's …" together. It is the form you reach for to offer, to propose, or to talk yourself into doing something.
Vowel harmony picks the ending
The optative ending opens with a low vowel that harmonises two ways with the last vowel of the stem. A front vowel — e, i, ö, ü — makes it -e, giving -eyim "let me" and -elim "let's"; a back vowel — a, o, u, or dotless ı — makes it -a, giving -ayım and -alım. The person vowel keys off that same low vowel, so the whole ending stays front or back.
| Last stem vowel | 1sg: let me | 1pl: let us |
|---|---|---|
| e · i · ö · ü | -eyim | -elim |
| a · ı · o · u | -ayım | -alım |
Only the front-back split of the last vowel counts here; rounding plays no part. That is why the ending has two shapes and not four — -eyim and -elim after a front stem, -ayım and -alım after a back one.
A buffer after a vowel
When the stem already ends in a vowel, a buffer -y- slides in so the two vowels never collide. oku "read" gives okuyayım "let me read", and başla "start" gives başlayalım "let's start". Drop the glide and you land on okuayım, which no one says.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| okuyayım | oku + ya + yım | let me read |
| başlayalım | başla + ya + lım | let's start |
Three worked forms
Read each of these as a proposal — what the speaker suggests doing, alone or together.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| gideyim | gid + e + yim | let me go |
| gidelim | gid + e + lim | let's go |
| yapayım | yap + a + yım | let me do (it) |
The look-alike ending on nouns
The optative -e looks exactly like the dative -e that marks "to" on a noun, and learners fold the two together. On a verb it is the optative: gide is "let him go". On a noun it is the dative: eve is "to home". Same two letters, two different suffixes.
The optative attaches to verbs only, so it never lands on a bare noun. To say "let me go home" you put the optative on the verb and leave the dative on the noun: eve gideyim. Bending the optative onto the noun to get evelim is not Turkish.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| gide | gid + e | let him go (a verb in the optative, not the dative) |
Where the imperative takes over
The optative owns the first person outright — there is no rival form for "let's", so gidelim stands alone. Away from the first person the imperative has taken the ground: the third-person gide "let him go" is grammatical but is rarely heard.
For "let him go" a speaker reaches for the third-person imperative ending -sin, as in gitsin, rather than the optative gide. Keep the optative for the first person, where it has no competitor, and let the imperative cover the rest.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| gidelim | gid + e + lim | let's go (first person — the optative's home ground) |
| gide | gid + e | let him go (grammatical, but the imperative is preferred) |
Suggestions and wishes
The first-person plural is the natural "let's": gidelim "let's go", görelim "let's see", görüşelim "let's meet, let's be in touch". A softener often leads in — hadi gidelim is "come on, let's go".
The first-person singular offers or thinks aloud: bakayım "let me look", softened to bir bakayım "let me just have a look". It reads as the speaker proposing something to themselves, a step they are about to take.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| gidelim | gid + e + lim | let's go |
| görelim | gör + e + lim | let's see |
| bakayım | bak + a + yım | let me look |
Turning it into a question
Add the question particle mi after a first-person-plural optative and the suggestion becomes a "shall we?": gidelim mi is "shall we go?", asking the group rather than announcing the plan.
A first-person-singular optative paired with a question word asks for direction: ne yapayım is "what should I do?", literally "what let-me- do". Here yapayım is a genuine request for guidance, not an offer.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| gidelim | gid + e + lim | let's go / shall we go |
| yapayım | yap + a + yım | let me do / what should I do |
When the stem changes
The optative ending opens with a vowel, so a stem ending in t softens that t to d before it goes on. git "go" becomes gid- and takes the ending as gideyim "let me go" and gidelim "let's go". This is the same softening the other vowel-initial suffixes trigger, not a quirk of the optative.
- git softens to gid- before the vowel-initial optative: gideyim, gidelim.
- Leaving the t hard gives gite, which is not a Turkish form; the softened third-person is gide.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| gideyim | gid + e + yim | let me go |
| gidelim | gid + e + lim | let's go |
Frequently asked questions
- How do you say 'let's ...' in Turkish?
- Put the first-person-plural optative on the verb: the ending -elim after a front stem, -alım after a back one. gidelim is "let's go", görelim "let's see", and başlayalım "let's start". After a vowel stem a buffer -y- appears, as in başlayalım.
- Is the -e in gide the same as the -e in eve?
- No. They look identical but are different suffixes. gide is a verb in the optative, "let him go"; eve is a noun in the dative, "to home". The optative goes on verbs and the dative on nouns, so evelim — the optative forced onto a noun — is not Turkish.
- What about 'let him go' and the other persons?
- In modern Turkish the optative is used mainly in the first person, for "let me" and "let's". For the third person the imperative takes over: "let him go" is gitsin, not the optative gide, which is correct but rarely heard.
- How do you ask 'shall we ...?' in Turkish?
- Take the first-person-plural optative and add the question particle mi: gidelim mi is "shall we go?". It turns the suggestion gidelim "let's go" into a question that puts the plan to the group.