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Turkish language has a gossip tense
- dkural 2y agoIt is also used to indicate surprise. "Sular gitmis!". "Bu yemek cok aci olmus!" - heard right after taking a bite :)
- tetris11 2y agoHow would you say: he allegedly died in front of me. O gozümden öldumek?
- sedatk 2y ago“Gözümün önünde ölmüş” (“o” is implied) but in that case it means a later realization of the death because the you missed that when he was dying. That might happen, for example, when you’re in a train, and you think the person in front of you is sleeping. At some point you realize that he’s dead and then you might form a sentence like that. If you had witnessed the person dying when he was dying, not as an after the fact realization, then you’d say “gözümün önünde öldü”. Because you knew he was dying when it was happening.
- brudgers 2y agoSo does English, https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-grammar/tense-changes-when-using-reported-speech/ https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-grammar/tense-c...
- namaria 2y agoNot the same thing. Reporting speech by saying 'subject said (...) [past tense verb] (...)' is not specific to English and doesn't carry the same nuance as the tweet implies this Turkish 'gossip' tense carries.
- brudgers 2y agoDifferent languages convey nuance with different mechanics. The only reason an English speaker would say "He said he would be at the airport" is to convey nuance. + He said he would be at the airport + He said he would be at the airport + He said he would be at the airport + He said he would be at the airport
- namaria 2y agoFair enough, but the interesting tidbit is that in Turkish you can add a verb ending that implies reportedness and that's interesting in itself and not present in English.
- brudgers 2y agoVerb tense is distinct from conjugation (and semantics are a whole different matter altogether). Careful consideration doesnt make trending tweets.
- sedatk 2y agoAlso, it's not optional. Unless you use "gossip tense" or explicitly state that it's hearsay, it must be factual. There's no ambiguity unlike English.
- exac 2y agoNo, you are misunderstanding if you think that is a "gossip tense".
- andavargas 2y agoEnglish has subtle forms of grammaticalized evidentiality, but not in verb conjugations. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-language-and-linguistics/article/abs/grammaticalization-of-evidentiality-in-english/544971EBB596C475A8BF0F37CDB5CCC4# https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-language-and...
- farmeroy 2y agoTurkish is one of my favorite languages I've learned, and one of the best languages for a language learner. I think it's great for learners for two reasons: first of all, the grammar and orthography is extremely regular, and probably more importantly is that in my experience turkish speaking people are more than happy to engage is extended small talk about anything, are extremely eager to understand you despite your horrible turkish, and are almost always impressed by any level of effort. This is in terrible contrast to french or german, where not only does the grammar or spelling horrify, but people are almost unwilling to understand your pitiful efforts :(
- rich_sasha 2y agoI feel your pain! I'm considering learning either Turkish or Arabic, for fun (as phonetically-spelled non-Indoeuropean languages), do you have a comparison with Arabic? I know exactly what you mean re French and German...
- farmeroy 2y agoI don't know any Arabic unfortunately. They are completely different language families with only slight overlap in vocabulary, but beyond that I can't make a comparison. I would say it probably depends on what your language learning goals are, but turkish is super fun to learn and speak, and its super fun to travel in turkey or just to hang out in istanbul. You might also surprise yourself speaking turkish in China one day with some Xinjiang people as well :D
- geoka9 2y agoTo add, knowledge of Turkish will also make it easier to converse in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and a bunch of other countries in the region.
- davidzweig 2y agoAlso many Iranians speak 'Turk' and understand Turkish from watching Turkish telenovelas on satellite TV.
- judicious 2y agoSomething like this occurs cross-linguistically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality Turkish has some evidentiality.
- politelemon 2y agoThis reddit thread casts better light on it. https://www.reddit.com/r/turkish/comments/1dgkxme/does_turkish_have_a_gossip_tense/ https://www.reddit.com/r/turkish/comments/1dgkxme/does_turki...
- idlewords 2y agoThis is not a tense but a grammatical mood, it's called the inferential mood. A bunch of languages have it to distinguish eyewitness accounts from reported speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood Verb tense has to do with an action's relationship to time, mood expresses the speaker's relationship and attitude to the action. English is pretty low on moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), while other languages have a more fun arsenal.
- mda 2y agoI am not sure I agree. The suffix -miş (and 4 other similar forms because of vowel harmony) is first and foremost indicative of time (the past). Yes there is the mood aspect, but time aspect, IMO, is primary. From the book "Turkish, a Comprehensive Grammar": The markers of past tense in Turkish are the verbal suffixes -DI and -mIş and the copular marker -(y)DI. "the past copula -(y)DI expresses past tense in absolute terms; that is, it locates a situation in a time prior to the moment of speech. -mIş, by contrast, is a marker of relative past tense." Robert Underhills "Turkish Grammar" calls it Narrative past tense. Geoffrey Lewis "Turkish Grammar" writes "the mis-past is exclusively a past tense" " miş-past. This base is formed by adding -miş to the stem: gelmiş, görmüş, almış, bulmuş. Two distinct functions are combined in it."
- aebtebeten 2y agoTurkish also has an imprecative mood, specifically for wishing ill on third parties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprecative_mood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprecative_mood On the other hand, a mood for well-wishing occurs in Sanskrit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictive [EDIT: and Quenya? https://eldamo.org/content/words/word-1905928135.html https://eldamo.org/content/words/word-1905928135.html ] On the gripping hand, AAVE actually has a richer tense-aspect-mood inventory than Standard American English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_English#Tense_and_aspect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_En... [now I wonder what language Galadriel's ring speech was supposed to have been in, and whether it had a commissive mood?]
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- therein 2y agoIt does indeed. And the author of this post is the founder of EksiSozluk. Hi Sedat. :) Because of this tense, I often find myself prefixing my sentences with "as far as I have heard".
- jayd16 2y agoWhat tense do they use in news or something you're fairly certain is fact but you didn't witness it yourself?
- teractiveodular 2y agoWikipedia states that they use the "normal" (not inferential/gossip) mood, because otherwise it could be taken as a value judgement in some contexts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood
- oguzcana 2y agoYou still use this tense if you are just reporting what you heard on news. What matters is that you have not witnessed it, just talking about what you heard on news. “There was an accident.” “Kaza olmuş” (the alleged gossip tense). If you want to emphasize something matter of factly, you might use the normal past tense (kaza oldu) but that might imply you seen it yourself, you you might get asked if you were actually there. In something like a history book, past events usually mentioned by a combination of this reported speech and past tense of the “do” verb: “Kaza olmuştur” To sum up, it is not specifically a gossip tense. If you were not there, even if you are certain, you use reported version.
- tetris11 2y agoIts also very important to slowly yell in this tense, when giving a public speech to more than 10 people. It doesn't matter if there is a mic or not, the words must carry with the wind and strike the hearts of all who hear it.
- darkhorn 2y agoIn the news they use "known past tense", like "gel-di". The article above mentiones "learned past tense", like "gel-miş".
- fph 2y agoIsn't this also how the subjunctive is used in German? News reports usually are in Konjuntiv I as a form of indirect speech.
- kleton 2y agohttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-mi%C5%9F#Turkish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-mi%C5%9F#Turkish
- madcaptenor 2y agoSo is this HN post gossip about the gossip tense?
- _9y71 2y agoI learned French because I moved to another country, and I was learning verb conjugations by regularly looking at the (very long) conjugation table. One day I just randomly looked at the table of verb conjugations in my mother tongue, Turkish, and I couldn't believe it, it's many times longer than the one in French! The fact that there are so many things I use in daily life without much effort has shown me how wonderfully the brain works.
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoNote that French does have a tense for gossip. You can say: julie aurait couché avec pierre hier, meaning julie allegedly selpt with pierre yesterday. But it's not a cultural thing to use it outside of tv or books.
- psychoslave 2y agoIl paraît que quelqu'un voudrait faire croire que ce genre de phrase n'est employé que dans des œuvres littéraires et télévisuelles. :)
- cryptonector 2y agoCe quoi on dirait n'est pas vrai du tout.
- BiteCode_dev 2y ago"On diraît" est utilisé par les enfants de 6 ans pour parler de jouer un rôle, mais pas vraiment par les adultes pour reporter un commérage.
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoBS (Baliverne Saugrenue)! La tournure correcte, "voudrait" n'est en pratique que très peu utilisée pour le témoignage indirect au quotidien. "Il paraît qu'on a voulu te faire croire que ce genre de phrase n'est employée que dans des œuvres littéraires et télévisuelles" est beaucoup plus réaliste. Indicatif + participe passé, ou imparfait. Le conditionnel est surtout utilisé pour l'hypothétique non lié aux ragots et encore, par des gens comme dans ce thread qui se soucient de leur language. Par contre, au journal de 20h: "on dit dans les milieux autorisés qu'un accord secret aurait été signé" est tout à fait courant.
- sinkasapa 2y agoIt is called evidentiality. It doesn't have any direct relationship to time, as one would expect with a tense. Southern Quechua has a reported event evidential affix as well. A friend who is a speaker of Quechua was once horrified, hearing that a man was going to be given a life sentence for murder in Bolivia. They played a portion of his confession over the radio, and the accused man used the reported event evidential through the entirety. Literally, saying that all his words were second hand, dubious information. To my friend, the implication was that he was saying what the police had told him to say. Apparently, those judging the case were not aware of the subtlety, and it did not come through in the Spanish translation of the confession, resulting in a conviction. Whatever the facts of the case were in the end, what is interesting is that for Quechua speakers like my friend, due to the use of the reported event evidential, there was no confession, even though all of the events of a murder were stated in the first person.
- sedatk 2y agoIt is a tense in Turkish though.
- mplewis 2y agoAs described in the other thread, this is known as the inferential mood in Turkish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood
- sedatk 2y agoIt is a tense. It can simultaneously function as a mood, that doesn't change its tense status. It changes the time aspect of a verb. I don't know how more tense you can be than that.
- bloppe 2y agoI don't speak Turkish. How would you distinguish e.g. "I heard he went" (inferential past) vs. "I heard he will go" (inferential future)? Is there such a distinction?
- fancymcpoopoo 2y agoor so you've heard
- johnthewise 2y agoYou can also exaggrate/repeat it to convey that you don't actually believe it. "O gelmiş" - "He/she (allegedly) came. "O gelmişmiş" " He/she (allegedly) came(but its bs).
- teractiveodular 2y agoThe closest equivalent in English is scare quotes. Works in spoken contexts too, just do finger quotes and change intonation a bit. You can use quotes neutrally: John says "the nuclear waste is totally safe". Or you can use them to cast subtle shade: John says the nuclear waste is "totally safe".
- Obscurity4340 2y ago> Geber-esi! die.like.a.dog-impr.3sg "May he die like a dog!" So thats where Trump gets his "like a dog" comparison he loves to whip out
- rdist 2y agoCan we get this applied to print, broadcast and cable news programs?
- sedatk 2y agoIronically, it's not used in journalistic contexts in Turkish. It would seem amateurish if it were, like they weren't doing their jobs properly.
- anticensor 2y agoBut it is in Azerbaijani (they also tend to makeshift the non finite verb suffix -ub as the perfective).
- 082349872349872 2y ago> “L'histoire est une suite de mensonges sur lesquels on est d'accord.” —NB ("History is a bunch of lies upon which we all agree")
- joecool1029 2y agohttps://nitter.poast.org/esesci/status/1843769276471349698 https://nitter.poast.org/esesci/status/1843769276471349698 (so you can view the thread without a login)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- darkhorn 2y agoFor first time I hear it as "gossip tense". Actually it is "a tense that you did not witness yourself" or officially "learned past tense".
- sedatk 2y agoYes, I coined the term myself (as I mention it later in the thread) because I thought it explained its function better. This was the thread that I first used it: https://x.com/esesci/status/1666152424564719639 https://x.com/esesci/status/1666152424564719639 Now that I looked for it, others apparently came up with the same name for it before me. I think, that only validates its how apt it is :)
- anticensor 2y agoIt's called past inferential in linguistic terms (all non-past inferentials in Turkish are compound tenses, but the past inferential is a base tense).
- svilen_dobrev 2y agoBulgarian has even more of these.. like whether one believes/trusts in what sh/e is (quoting of) being said (by someone else), and the like - "Dubitative" forms.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_verbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_verbs
- nickjj 2y agoI know very little about speaking Turkish but one interesting thing I learned recently is there's a different word for aunt and uncle depending on if it's your mom or dad's side.
- incognito124 2y agoSlavic languages do that too
- depressedpanda 2y agoI think that might be quite common. In Swedish we have morbror/farbror (literally mother-brother/father-brother) and moster/faster (mother's sister/father's sister). It's similar for grandparents.
- shultays 2y agoTurkish also has distinct words for grandmothers that works in a similar way. Father is baba, mother is anne and for grandmothers we have "babaanne" "anneanne" (generally pronounced & shortened as "babane" and "anane") But interestingly no distinct words for grandfathers, both grandfathers are called "dede" (so no "babababa" or "annebaba")
- thaumasiotes 2y agoIn Chinese the terms will also distinguish whether the brother/sister is older or younger than your parent is.
- noisy_boy 2y agoBengali does that too and even allows for age based relative positioning by using a "prefix" + "relationship_name": - Father's side: Uncle: Older than father (age_position_prefix + Jethu): 1. Eldest: Boro Jethu 2. After him: Mejo Jethu 3. After him: Sejo Jethu 4. After him: Chhoto Jethu Younger than father (age_position_prefix + Kaaku): 5. Eldest: Boro Kaaku 6. After him: Mejo Kaaku 7. After him: Sejo Kaaku 8. After him: Chhoto Kaaku Aunt: Same age_position_prefix as above but common suffix: Pishi - Mother's side: Uncle: Same age_position_prefix as that on the father's side but common suffix: Maama Aunt: Same age_position_prefix as that on the father's side but common suffix: Maashi Boro means eldest Mejo means middle Sejo means younger than the middle Chhoto means youngest So men on the father's side have more dedicated words than others.
- tradertef 2y agoThis tense is the easiest way to understand if someone's first language is Turkish. Even my Turkish friends who are born in Turkey misses this if they learned the language in school, e.g., Laz friends.
- rickcarlino 2y agoIs this similar to -대요 endings in Korean used for indirect quotation?
- krick 2y agoAs otgers have said, a mood, not a tense. The same thing exists in Latvian. "Viņš ir" = "he is", "viņš esot" = "he allegedly is".
- sedatk 2y agoIt's a tense. Without it, the verb would be tenseless, in its imperative form: gel -> come gelmiş -> he/she/it came. (hearsay) geldi -> he/she/it came. (factual) It's not optional either.
- krick 2y agoNo, it doesn't make it a tense. Different moods may have their own form in one or more tenses and it has nothing to do with being "optional" either. To be fair, distinction is a bit artificial, but generally these are defined by their meaning. "Tense" applies to variability in time (past, present, etc), and "mood" applies to variability in reality (factual statement, hearsay, wishful thinking, etc)
- sedatk 2y agoOkay, but this causes variability in time? I don't understand. Is there a rule in linguistics that any tense that also has another semantic function can't ever be called a tense? Then, what are these 13,000 Google Scholar articles that refers to an imaginary "Present Perfect Tense" in English? https://scholar.google.com/scholar?lookup=0&q=%22present+perfect+tense%22+&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?lookup=0&q=%22present+per...
- krick 2y agoThere is no "rule", it's just how these terms are defined and what they are supposed to mean if we are pedantic enough with how we use them. "Present perfect" is a tense (or, if we are really pedantic, it's a tense and an aspect), because it's about time of action (the process described was happening in the past, but now it's finished, and it has some result). In a sense, this is not even about the language, it's an aspect of reality, except we don't say that all languages have present perfect tense, because in many languages there is no grammatic form to express it. If English had a way to express hearsay grammatically, we could say it has renarrative/inferential mood. Furthermore, these are two kinda independent axis. If English had a grammatic variation for depending on if it's a hearsay only for the present perfect, we'd say it has renarrative mood in present perfect tense, but doesn't have in any other tense (even though, obviously, in real English we can kinda express similar meaning by adding the word "allegedly" to any tense, but there's no grammatic variation, so we say english doesn't have such mood, but then, one can argue that the same can be said about the word "have", so the line is a bit blurry). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tense%E2%80%93aspect%E2%80%93mood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tense%E2%80%93aspect%E2%80%93m...
- onursurme 2y agoIt is not gossip tense. There is no such name in Turkish grammar.
- revskill 2y agoIs it an adverb? Possibly ?
- nurettin 2y agoThere is past tense, with 'di' 'diler' postfix. Example: 'dediler' > 'they said' This one is literally called "past tense with 'miş'". Example: 'demişler' > 'they supposedly said'.
- akaralar 2y agothis is an “irrealis mood”, there are quite a few of them with different functions, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrealis_mood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrealis_mood language is fascinating.
- mesutpiskin 2y agoThere are two past tense forms in Turkish, both of which have been used since the Old Turkish period. Our suffixes for the witnessed past tense are "-dI / -dU." This suffix is explained as the witnessed past tense because the action occurred in front of the speaker's eyes in the past. Our suffixes for the inferential past tense are "-mIş / -mUş." These suffixes express that the action took place at an unseen time in the past. In today's written language, only "-mIş / -mUş" suffixes are used as the inferential past tense markers. ref: https://turkishstudies.net/DergiTamDetay.aspx?ID=14135 https://turkishstudies.net/DergiTamDetay.aspx?ID=14135
- thwg 2y agoIt's not a tense. It's called evidentiality.
- sedatk 2y agoWhether it’s a tense or not is both mentioned in the thread, and discussed here on this HN post under two or three threads now. How did you manage to miss all that? :)
- joelignaatius 2y agoWhat is the minimum set of grammar for which all other grammar in a language can be constructed? So if Turkish has a gossip tense then we know we can construct that tense from English right? I'm thinking in terms of conlangs but not just binary.