Turkish Past Tense: -di vs -miş and When to Use Each

Turkish has two simple past tenses, and both describe finished events. The difference is in how you know about the event. **Use -di (geldi) for something you saw, did yourself or know for certain. Use -miş (gelmiş) for something you heard from someone else, worked out from evidence or have only just found out.** English often translates both the same way ("she came"), which is why learners mix them up.

Linguists call this evidentiality: grammar that marks where your information comes from. The Universal Dependencies guidelines for Turkish say that both suffixes refer to a completed past event and that the two differ in evidentiality and share the same tense. Turkish school grammar makes the same split, calling -di the görülen geçmiş zaman ("seen past") and -miş the öğrenilen or duyulan geçmiş zaman ("learned" or "heard past").

-di: the witnessed past

Use -di when you were there or when the fact is beyond doubt for you. Dün Ankara'ya gittim means "I went to Ankara yesterday". You made the trip yourself, so there is nothing to report or infer.

The suffix follows four-way vowel harmony (our guide to Turkish vowel harmony and suffixes covers the rules). The vowel is ı, i, u or ü, matching the last vowel of the verb stem. The consonant can change too: after the voiceless consonants f, s, t, k, ç, ş, h, p, the d becomes t. The TDK spelling guide lists this consonant harmony (ünsüz uyumu) among its sound rules.

The person endings come straight after the suffix, and they are the short set: -m, -n, -k, -niz, -ler.

You also use -di for settled facts that nobody alive witnessed. İstanbul 1453'te fethedildi ("Istanbul was conquered in 1453") is history you can stand behind, so it takes -di.

-miş: the reported, inferred or surprised past

-miş tells the listener that your knowledge is indirect. There are three common reasons to use it.

1. Hearsay: someone told you, or you read it. Ahmet evlenmiş means "Ahmet got married (I heard)".
2. Inference: you see the result but not the event. You look outside, the street is white, and you say Kar yağmış, "It has snowed."
3. Surprise or a new discovery: you realise something you didn't know. Meeting a friend's child after two years, you say Ne kadar büyümüşsün!, "How much you've grown!"

Linguists call the surprise use mirative, and the Wikipedia article on mirativity gives Turkish -miş as one of its examples.

The form is simpler than -di, because the m never changes. Only the vowel follows four-way harmony: -mış, -miş, -muş, -müş. So gitmek gives gitmiş, never "gitmış" or "gittmiş".

The person endings differ from the -di set. -miş takes the longer endings you also use with -iyor and the future.

Turkish fairy tales open with -miş: Bir varmış, bir yokmuş, "Once there was, once there wasn't". The storyteller never saw any of it, and the whole tale stays in -miş.

The same split after nouns and adjectives

The two pasts also attach to nouns and adjectives, with -y- added after a vowel. Hastaydı means "she was ill", and you know it. Hastaymış means "she was ill, apparently". The Universal Dependencies page uses exactly this pair. The pattern gives evdeydi / evdeymiş ("he was at home") and öğretmendi / öğretmenmiş ("she was a teacher"). You'll hear these short forms all the time in conversation, often as reactions: Pahalıymış ("It turns out it's expensive"), Güzelmiş ("Oh, that's nice").

Negatives and questions

Negatives

The negative -me/-ma comes before the past suffix. Because -me/-ma ends in a vowel, -di keeps its d in every negative form.

In the tables below, a capital letter marks a sound that changes to match the word:

Gitmedim means "I didn't go." Ödevini yapmamış means "He didn't do his homework (so I hear, or so it seems)".

Questions

Questions use the particle mı, mi, mu, mü, and here the two pasts behave differently.

• With -di, the person ending stays on the verb and mi comes last: Geldin mi? ("Did you come?"), Geldiniz mi?, Yaptın mı?
• With -miş, the person ending moves onto the particle: Gelmiş misin?, Gelmiş miyiz?, Gelmiş misiniz? The third person plural is the exception: Gelmişler mi?

Negative questions combine the two rules: Gelmedin mi? ("Didn't you come?") and Gelmemiş mi? ("Hasn't he come, then?"). The TDK spelling rules say that the question particle is written as a separate word, follows the vowel harmony of the word before it and carries any endings that come after it. So geldin mi is correct and "geldinmi" is wrong.

Where learners mix them up

Using -miş for the English present perfect

"I have been to Turkey" is not Türkiye'ye gitmişim. **In the first person, -miş means you did something without being aware of it.** Uyuyakalmışım! means "I overslept!", said when you wake up and see the clock. For your own trips, use -di: Türkiye'ye gittim or Daha önce Türkiye'de bulundum.

Passing on gossip with -di

A colleague tells you that Ayşe has resigned. If you repeat it as Ayşe istifa etti, you are claiming first-hand knowledge. Turkish speakers would normally say Ayşe istifa etmiş. The -di version isn't a grammar error, but it is a stronger claim than you probably mean.

Reading -mıştı as hearsay

-mıştı (gelmişti, yapmıştı) is -miş followed by -di, and it is the past perfect: "had come", "had done". Ben vardığımda tren kalkmıştı means "When I arrived, the train had left." The final -di presents the event as known. You meet this form often in written stories and in B2 and C1 reading texts; our overview of Turkish levels A1 to C2 describes what those levels ask of you.

Hardening the m

After drilling gitti and baktı, some learners carry the change over and write "gittmiş" or "baktmış". The correct forms are gitmiş and bakmış.

Missing the polite softening

-miş can make a complaint gentler, because it frames the problem as something you've just noticed. Hesap yanlış yazılmış galiba ("I think the bill has been written up wrong") sounds less accusing than Yanlış yazdınız ("You wrote it wrong"). Our article on Turkish for working in Turkey uses the same move for a problem with pay.

Mini-dialogues

Seen versus heard

Two friends are talking about a football match.

A: Dün akşam maçı izledin mi? B: Evet, izledim. Çok güzel bir maçtı. C: Ben izlemedim ama Galatasaray kazanmış, değil mi?

B watched the match and uses -di. C only knows the result, so C uses -miş and checks with değil mi?

Evidence and confirmation

Someone opens the curtains in the morning.

A: Aa, kar yağmış! B: Evet, gece yağdı. Saat ikide uyandım, gördüm.

A sees the snow on the ground and infers that it fell. B was awake at two and watched it fall, so the same snowfall gets -di from B.

Surprise

A teacher meets a former student at the market.

A: Merhaba hocam! Beni hatırladınız mı? B: Tabii ki! Türkçeyi ne kadar iyi öğrenmişsin, çok güzel konuşuyorsun!

The teacher is noticing the student's progress for the first time, so öğrenmişsin fits.

Quick decision table

**If you would add "apparently" or "it turns out" in English, use -miş.** If you would say it flatly and stand behind it, use -di.

The two pasts sit next to the present, the aorist and the future, which our guide to -iyor, -ir and -ecek covers. Casual speech shortens some of these forms; see spoken versus written Turkish. The other big system to learn is Turkish cases.

Frequently asked questions

Is -miş the same as the English present perfect?

No. English "has done" is about when something happened, while -miş is about where your information comes from. "I've seen that film" is O filmi gördüm, with -di. The two overlap only when you discover a result, as in Kar yağmış ("It has snowed").

Can I use -di for something I didn't see?

Yes, if you treat it as certain. Historical facts, official results and things you have checked all take -di. Choosing -miş shows that you are passing the information on or inferring it; it doesn't mean you doubt it.

Is -miş rude or vague?

No. It is often the politer choice, because it softens complaints and corrections. About yourself, though, it means "without realising", so Geldim ("I came") and Gelmişim ("I seem to have come") say different things.

What is the difference between -mıştı and -miş?

-miş is the reported or inferred past. -mıştı is the past perfect ("had done"), used for an event that came before another past event, and it doesn't mark hearsay.

The rule fits on one line. Applying it mid-sentence, when you're telling a story about your weekend, is harder, and it's easy to keep slipping into -miş for things you saw yourself until someone points it out in a lesson. Book a free trial lesson of 20 to 30 minutes with Ceylan, or check your level with the free test first.