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Turkish language has a gossip tense

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Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#71

Post by k__ »

farmeroy wrote: post #4

Turkish 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…

As a German speaker, I understand those issues.

I currently learn Spanish, and I'm always amused by how regular everything is.

In German, words constantly get split up and change positions in the sentences when you say something slightly different.

Du sprichst Deutsch.

Sprichst du Deutsch?

Vs

Hablas Español.

¿Hablas Español?

Also, most Germans don't like speaking German with people who don't speak it well. Probably, because subtle errors can change the whole meaning.

For most Germans it's easier to speak English with foreigners who speak better English than German.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#72

Post by amaccuish »

sedatk wrote: post #42
idlewords wrote: post #8

This 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 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 oth…

It is a tense. It’s literally taught as “learned past tense” in Turkish schools. It’s similar to present perfect tense of English.

What "Turkish schools" call it is irrelevant, it adds "colour" to an event. Just because the events happen to be in the past, does not make the Inferential Mood a tense. An event can be in the past but factual.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#73

Post by oguzcana »

jayd16 wrote: post #11

What tense do they use in news or something you're fairly certain is fact but you didn't witness it yourself?

You 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.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#74

Post by amaccuish »

sedatk wrote: post #57
yongjik wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In English, school-taught grammar is often wildly different from modern linguists' view. For example, while traditional English grammar has no less than 12 tenses, linguists consider it to only have two tenses: past or present. The remaining differences don't really behave like tense. I could imagine something similar happening in Turkish.

Let me put it this way: it's not less of a tense than present perfect tense in English. They signify the time in a similar way.

As the other commenter said, perfect is the aspect, so the internal structure of an event, very important e.g. in Slavic languages. Your confusion leaves the door open to doubt on your actual knowledge of linguistics.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#75

Post by andro_dev »

farmeroy wrote: post #17
adrian_b wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the speakers of European languages it is usually quite difficult to learn to pronounce correctly some of the sounds of Arabic. Turkish does not have any sounds hard to pronounce for Europeans. The Indo-European languages and the Afro-Asiatic, including the Semitic languages like Arabic, are distinguished from most languages of the world by having much more irregular grammars, of the kind that was traditionally na…

It would probably be fun to read some original mathematical texts in arabic if you could. I would say that since modern turkish didn't come into being until the founding of the republic, you really do lose the historical context. I would love to learn ottoman turkish one day...

Actually there is no such thing as Ottoman Turkish, it is still Turkish with heavily borrowed phrases. It is not a distinct language. You won’t have any hard time understanding the spoken Turkish in Anatolia of that time. So called Ottoman Turkish was mostly limited to the government and literature use. Here is a recording of “Ottoman Turkish” from that time.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fmNl4gcufBU&pp=ygU0RXNraSBrYXl...

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#78

Post by [deleted] »

sedatk wrote: post #42
idlewords wrote: post #8

This 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 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 oth…

It is a tense. It’s literally taught as “learned past tense” in Turkish schools. It’s similar to present perfect tense of English.

[deleted]

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#79

Post by sedatk »

hashmush wrote: post #70
sedatk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it this way: it's not less of a tense than present perfect tense in English. They signify the time in a similar way.

Right, because "present" is the tense here and "perfect" the aspect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_perfect

Ok, how is that different than "learned"/"reported" being the aspect and "past" being the tense in Turkish?

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#80

Post by farmeroy »

k__ wrote: post #71
farmeroy wrote: post #4

Turkish 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…

As a German speaker, I understand those issues. I currently learn Spanish, and I'm always amused by how regular everything is. In German, words constantly get split up and change positions in the sentences when you say something slightly different. Du sprichst Deutsch. Sprichst du Deutsch? Vs Hablas Español. ¿Hablas Español? Also, most Germans don't like speaking German with people who don't speak it well. Probably,…

Yeah it took me until B2 or so before I could get any Germans to really engage with me in German. My son grew up there and his German was quite good while we lived there, and even when I reached C1 he was perpetually ashamed of my accent and all of my grammatical errors. Of course, now that it's been some time since we've lived there my German has only gotten worse and he suffers even more when I try to practice
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