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Turkish language has a gossip tense

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Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#162
post #24

I 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 wonder…

French has four base tenses and four compounding aspects.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#163
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…

You found Turkish grammar easy compared to french? What was your first language?

It was really nice to not have to mess with too much of a case system, after Russian.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#164
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…

I 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...

All other things being equal, I didn't feel up to the task of learning a language that regularly omits all vowels in written form. But man, that calligraphy...

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#165
post #62
post #60

Can we get this applied to print, broadcast and cable news programs?

Ironically, it's not used in journalistic contexts in Turkish. It would seem amateurish if it were, like they weren't doing their jobs properly.

But it is in Azerbaijani (they also tend to makeshift the non finite verb suffix -ub as the perfective).

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#166
post #91

For first time I hear it as "gossip tense". Actually it is "a tense that you did not witness yourself" or officially "learned past tense".

Yes, 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 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 :)

It's called past inferential in linguistic terms (all non-past inferentials in Turkish are compound tenses, but the past inferential is a base tense).

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#169
post #120
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, when i was living in turkey and started learning turkish this is the thing that most impressed me. High similarity to Korean also.

Well, considering where Turkish (Turkic?) comes from, perhaps not a coincidence?

indeed; but still incredible that it retained so many characteristics over time and at such great distance from origin! I had been very fascinated with this.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if anybody who’s learned English would be willing to share some bits they found unusual or unique?

A few things—articles in English (the, a) are subtle as hell and extremely difficult to use correctly if you're not a native speaker. The way you can verb any noun is super interesting and productive. And having to memorize the idiomatic different meanings of a billion verb + preposition combinations (take up, take down, take over, take in, take away, take on) is a real treat for learners.

My Korean tutor said the same thing about “the”. I said “doesn't it just mean there is only one instance?" and he replied "the police".

For the benefit of other folks wanting to follow up the "take off" thing: it's called a "phrasal verb".

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