On page 8 he writes,
In Turkish we have a special tense that allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we've seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense. It is a useful distinction to make as we "remember" our earliest life experiences, parents, our cradles, our baby carriages, our first steps, all as reported by our parents, stories to which we listen with the same rapt attention we might pay some brilliant tale of some other person. It's a sensation as sweet as seeing ourselves in our dreams, but we pay a heavy price for it.Amazing. Are you amazed by this? I couldn't sleep after reading it, I was so amazed.
3 comments:
I wonder if he means mood, rather than tense? Most European languages have a subjunctive mood (marked by different verb endings), which is used for statements the speaker doesn't personally vouch for the veracity of. Very useful. It's actually rather odd that English doesn't have that: it's something you need all the time.
I wondered if Orhan figured in this sudden passion for things Turkish :-)
It's the -mis/mus (narrative) tense
yazmak to write
yazdi he/she/it wrote
yazmis he/she/it wrote (hearsay)
for more tenses=
http://www.learningpracticalturkish.com/links-to-turkish-verb-tenses.html
I assume it's subjunctive, but I rather secretely hope it's something new and myseterious that I've never heard about before.
One thing I love about spanish is that you can know with your eyes (conocer) or you can know with you rhead (saber). One thing I love about English is that you can know with your heart. (learn)
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