Evidential / Reported Past Tense (-miş) in Turkish
Evidential / Reported Past Tense (-miş)
The suffix -mIş marks evidentiality: hearsay (I was told), indirect inference (evidently/it seems), or belated realization (I realized that...).
The Evidential / Reported Past Tense (Duyulan / Öğrenilen Geçmiş Zaman) uses the 4-way suffix -mIş (-mış, -miş, -muş, -müş). It encodes evidentiality—a grammatical category indicating the speaker's source of information rather than just the time of the event. It has three distinct meanings:
1. Hearsay / Rumor (information learned secondhand): Ahmet evlenmiş (I hear / they say that Ahmet got married); Film çok güzelmiş (They say the film is very good). 2. Inference based on physical evidence: Observing wet ground and concluding Yağmur yağmış (It must have rained / It has evidently rained). 3. Unconscious action / Belated realization: Noticing something unexpectedly about oneself or a situation: Cüzdanımı evde unutmuşum! (I just realized I left my wallet at home!); Çok yorulmuşum (I'm so exhausted without even realizing it!). It is also the staple tense for fairy tales (Bir varmış, bir yokmuş...).
Personal endings: gelmişim, gelmişsin, gelmiş, gelmişiz, gelmişsiniz, gelmişler. Negation uses -me/-ma: gel-me-miş (apparently he did not come). Learners often struggle to distinguish -miş from the direct past -di, mistakenly using -di for stories heard from friends.
Examples
Dün gece şiddetli bir yağmur yağmış, sokaklar sular içinde.
Evidently a heavy rain fell last night; the streets are full of water.
Ali geçen hafta yeni bir eve taşınmış.
I heard that Ali moved to a new house last week.
Eyvah, cüzdanımı evdeki masanın üzerinde unutmuşum!
Oh no, I just realized I left my wallet on the table at home!
Bu akşam televizyondaki maç çok heyecanlı geçmiş.
They say the match on television tonight was very exciting.
Related terms
Learn Turkish in context — free dictionary and practice.