Now we're going to talk about how to form the negative of the definite past tense in Turkish
So how to say things like "she didn't laugh," "I didn't go" and so on
This is very simple what we're going to do is we're going to take the stem of the verb, we're going to use
"vermek": to give as our example verb again to "ver-"
then before we add the definite past tense suffix
We're going to add the correct form of the negative suffix according to the rules of two-way vowel harmony
So there are only two forms it can take -me or -ma
For "Ver-"
It's going to be -me so "verme-"
Verb stem, negative suffix. To the negative suffix we're going to add the correct form of the definite past tense suffix according to the rules of
vowel harmony
four-way vowel harmony although in practice because the negative suffix only takes two forms
It will either be
"-di" or "-dı" so for "vermek" will be "vermedi"
We want to say "I didn't give" though, so on top of the definite past tense suffix
we're going to add the appropriate form of the personal suffix for the definite past tense so "vermedim"
Optional personal pronoun "ben": I
"Ben vermedim": I didn't give
Let's look at another one
"Sen": you singular informal, "vermedin" - "Sen vermedin": you didn't give
"o": he, she, it, "vermedi" and because there isn't
a personal suffix for us to add in the third person singular we'll stop there, "o vermedi": me she or it didn't give
moving on to the plural, "biz": we
"vermedik": we didn't give
"Siz": you plural ,or you formal, "vermedi.."
now we're going to choose the appropriate form of
the second person plural personal suffix according to the rules of vowel harmony so "vermediniz"
and again in
practice, it's actually only going to be "-niz" or "-nız" in the negative so "siz vermediniz": You guys didn't give
They: "onlar"
"vermedi": they didn't give or
to emphasize the plurality or to be clear we can say "vermediler"
Notice that if we do choose to add -ler/-lar in the third person plural
that suffix is going to follow the rules of two-way vowel harmony, so "onlar vermediler": they didn't give
They didn't give let's look at an example with another verb
"yapmak": to make or to do, so we'll start with the verb stem "yap-"
add the appropriate form of the negative suffix so "yapma-"
definite past tense suffix, "yapmadı"
personal settings "yapmadım": I didn't make or I didn't do
For "sen": you singular, informal , "sen yapmadın": you didn't do it, or you didn't make it
He, she or it: "o yapmadı": he, she or it didn't do it or make it
"Biz yapmadık": We didn't do it, we didn't make it
"Siz yapmadınız": you plural or you formal didn't do, didn't make it
"Onlar yapmadı" or "yapmadılar"
Notice that
"vermediler" but "yapmadılar"
we're following the rules of two-way vowel harmony with that final plural suffix