Now I'm going to talk about how to express the definite past tense in Turkish without using a verb in the negative
So how to form sentences like "I was not a teacher" or "He was not...
interesting" so on and so forth
It is actually very simple. It's easier than the affirmative.
We'll start with the word as our example word will use "yazar" again the Turkish word meaning "writer"
yazar
In Turkish if you want to say "I am not a writer" in the present tense you use the word "değil" meaning "not"
And attach to it the appropriate personal ending so then, "yazar değilim"
I am not a writer
But what if you wanted to say "I was not a writer"
We'll start it exactly the same way with the Turkish word "yazar"
değil
We'll continue on with "değil"
And to "değil" the Turkish word meaning "not" we'll simply add the appropriate form of the definite past auxiliary.
The good news is that since
in the negative the definite past auxiliary will always be attaching to "değil"
the form we choose is not going to change because it's always going to attach to "değil". So it will be
değildi
followed by the appropriate personal suffix, so in this case, "ben"
optional, "I"
Yazar değildim
I was not a writer.
Let's see how this looks
Sen
yazar
değildin.
Sen yazar değildin.
You were not a writer.
O
yazar
değildi.
Biz
yazar
değildik.
We we were not writers.
Siz
yazar
değildi...
Now we remember that the second person plural personal suffix follows the rules of four-way vowel harmony, so
değildiniz.
Siz yazar değildiniz.
Onlar
yazar...
we have three options
We can say "Onlar yazar değil": they are not writers, and that's perfectly correct.
We can also say, "Onlar yazar değil..." Excuse me..!
This would be in the present, "Onlar yazar değil."
In the past we can say, "Onlar yazar değildi"
They were not writers
and this is correct.
We can also say "Onlar yazar değildiler."
They were not writers.
Or, also meaning, "they they were not writers" we can say...
Onlar yazar değilerdi.
All three are correct.
And we can simply substitute any
noun or adjective here, so it could be
Sen
neşeli değildin
You were not cheerful.
Or
Siz
küçük
değildiniz.
You were not, you guys, were not little.
And you noticed that
değil
With its various forms is not going to alter depending on the noun or adjective that we substitute here.