How to Learn Turkish Verbs Effectively

Understand how a Turkish verb is built

Turkish is an agglutinative language: it adds suffixes to a word one after another, and each suffix has one job. A verb that needs several words in English is often a single word in Turkish. Geliyorum means “I am coming”: gel is the stem (come), -iyor marks the present continuous and -um means “I”.

Verbs appear in dictionaries in the infinitive, which ends in -mek or -mak: gelmek (to come), yapmak (to do), okumak (to read). Remove that ending and you have the stem, the part every other form is built on. The order of the pieces is always the same:

• Stem: gel-
• Negative, when needed: -me/-ma
• Tense or mood: -iyor, -di, -ecek, -ir and others
• Personal ending: who does the action

Master vowel harmony first

Vowel harmony is the rule that makes the vowels of a suffix match the last vowel of the word. It looks complicated at first, but it applies to almost every suffix, so time spent on it pays back everywhere.

Two-way harmony: e or a

Some suffixes have two forms. After the front vowels e, i, ö and ü they use e; after the back vowels a, ı, o and u they use a. That is why the infinitive is gelmek but yapmak, and the future is geleceğim but yapacağım.

Four-way harmony: i, ı, u or ü

Other suffixes have four forms. After e or i they use i; after a or ı they use ı; after o or u they use u; after ö or ü they use ü. The present continuous shows this clearly: geliyorum (gelmek), yapıyorum (yapmak), görüyorum (görmek). When the stem ends in a vowel, that vowel merges with the suffix: okumak gives okuyorum.

Learn the main tenses in a useful order

You do not need every tense at once. These four cover most everyday speech, and each one teaches a pattern you will reuse. The examples use gelmek, to come.

Present continuous: -iyor

Used for what is happening now and, very often, for everyday present actions: geliyorum (I am coming), geliyorsun, geliyor, geliyoruz, geliyorsunuz, geliyorlar. The -iyor suffix follows four-way harmony on its first vowel, but -yor itself never changes.

Simple past: -di

Used for completed actions you saw or know directly: geldim (I came), geldin, geldi, geldik, geldiniz, geldiler. The suffix follows four-way harmony, and after the voiceless consonants ç, f, h, k, p, s, ş and t the d becomes t: yaptım (I did), içtim (I drank).

Future: -ecek / -acak

Used for plans and predictions: geleceğim (I will come), geleceksin, gelecek, geleceğiz, geleceksiniz, gelecekler. Notice that the k becomes ğ before a vowel, as in geleceğim and geleceğiz.

Aorist: -ir / -ar

The aorist, geniş zaman, is used for habits, general truths, offers and polite requests: gelirim (I come, I will come), gelirsin, gelir. It is the least regular tense. Single-syllable stems usually take -er or -ar, as in yapar, but a small group of very common ones take -ir, including gelir, alır, bilir and görür. Longer stems take -ir, -ır, -ur or -ür, as in konuşur, and stems ending in a vowel just add -r, as in okur. Learn the common exceptions as vocabulary.

Personal endings, negatives and questions

Two sets of personal endings

The present continuous, future and aorist use one set of endings: -im, -sin, no ending, -iz, -siniz, -ler (in their harmonised forms, as in geliyorum and geliyoruz). The simple past uses a shorter set: -m, -n, no ending, -k, -niz, -ler, as in geldim, geldin and geldik. Learning them as two families saves a lot of memorising.

The negative: -me / -ma

To make a verb negative, put -me or -ma straight after the stem: gelmedim (I did not come), gelmeyeceğim (I will not come). With the present continuous, the vowel of -me merges into -iyor: gelmiyorum (I am not coming), yapmıyorum (I am not doing). The negative aorist is irregular: gelmem (I do not come), gelmezsin, gelmez.

Questions with mi

Yes–no questions use the particle mi, mı, mu or mü, written as a separate word and following vowel harmony. In most tenses the personal ending moves onto the particle: geliyor musun? (are you coming?), gelecek misin? (will you come?). In the simple past the ending stays on the verb: geldin mi? (did you come?).

Practise in a way that sticks

• Choose a small set of frequent verbs, such as gelmek, gitmek, yapmak, almak, vermek, görmek and okumak, and conjugate each one aloud for every person.
• Change one thing at a time: the same verb in three tenses, then the same tense with three verbs, then the negative and the question.
• Say real sentences about your day: what you did yesterday, what you are doing now and what you will do tomorrow.
• Look out for stems that change, such as gitmek, where the t becomes d before a vowel: gidiyorum, gideceğim.
• Review a few minutes every day rather than for hours once a week.

Check your forms with Türkçemiz

Patterns are learned by practice, but while you learn it helps to check a form before you write or say it. Our app Türkçemiz, for Turkish verb conjugation , has 329 common verbs you can search in Turkish or in your own language. Each verb has conjugation tables for every person, with the endings highlighted, for tenses including the present continuous, the aorist, the future and the past, in positive, negative and question forms.

A verb of the day on the home screen and a practice section with statistics and streaks make it easy to keep a short daily habit.