The Infinitive as a Noun: -mAk

The -mAk infinitive — gelmek, yüzmek, okumak — is not only the dictionary form of a verb. It is also a full-fledged noun meaning "to do" or "doing," and like any noun it can be the subject of a sentence, the object of a verb, and take case endings. This page shows how to use -mAk as a verbal noun and, crucially, what happens to its final k the moment a vowel-initial ending arrives.

-mAk as subject and object

In its bare form, -mAk names an activity in the abstract — the equivalent of English "to swim" or "swimming" when you talk about the activity itself, not who is doing it. It happily sits at the front of a sentence as the subject:

It can also be the bare object of a verb like istemek ("to want"), where no case ending is needed:

Notice that in all of these, the -mAk form carries no subject of its own. Yüzmek is just "swimming" — there is no "my" or "your" inside it. That subject-neutrality is the defining feature of -mAk, and it is what separates it from the action nominal -mA, which can carry a subject.

The k drops before a vowel: -mAyI, -mAyA

Here is the single most important spelling fact on this page. When you add a case ending that begins with a vowel — the accusative -(y)I or the dative -(y)A — the final k of -mAk disappears. What is left ends in a vowel (-ma / -me), so the usual buffer -y- steps in:

• yüzmek
  • accusative → yüzme
    • -yi → yüzmeyi (not yüzmeki)
• okumak
  • accusative → okuma
    • -yı → okumayı
• gitmek
  • dative → gitme
    • -ye → gitmeye

The resulting -mAyI and -mAyA forms look identical to the cased forms of the -mA action nominal, and that is no accident: once the k is gone, the two are spelled the same. The difference is purely about whether a possessive (a subject) is present. In -mAk there never is one.

Which verbs demand which case

Many Turkish verbs require their -mAk object in a specific case, and there is no way around memorizing the pairings — they rarely match English intuition. A few high-frequency anchors:

• severim / hoşlanırım → accusative: yüzmeyi severim ("I love swimming")
• başlamak ("to begin") → dative: çalışmaya başladım ("I started working")
• karar vermek ("to decide") → dative: gitmeye karar verdim ("I decided to go")
• öğrenmek ("to learn") → accusative: okumayı öğrendim ("I learned to read")

The purpose form: -mAk için

To express purpose — "in order to" — Turkish uses the bare -mAk plus için ("for"). Here the k stays, because için is a separate word, not a vowel-initial suffix:

This works only when the purpose and the main clause share a subject. The same "I" wants to see you and does the coming. When the subjects differ, -mAk için is no longer available and you switch to the subject-bearing nominalization — see below.

When -mAk is not enough: the different-subject problem

Because -mAk carries no subject, it can only describe an action done by the same person as the main verb. Gitmek istiyorum can only mean "I want (myself) to go." The moment you want a different doer — "I want you to go" — -mAk fails completely, because there is nowhere to attach "you." Turkish then forces you onto the action nominal -mA with a possessive: gitmeni istiyorum ("I want you to go").

So the division of labor is clean: same subject → -mAk; different subject → -mA + possessive. Keeping that boundary straight is one of the most useful things you can learn at this stage. For the closely related verb istemek itself, see expressing desire with istemek.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• -mAk is the subject-neutral verbal noun: it names an activity without saying who does it.
• It works as a subject (Yüzmek güzeldir) and as a bare object (Gitmek istiyorum).
• Before a vowel-initial case ending the final k drops and a buffer -y- appears: yüzmeyi, okumayı, gitmeye.
• -mAk için expresses purpose ("in order to") and keeps the k because için is a separate word — but only when the subjects match.
• When you need a different subject, -mAk is impossible; switch to the -mA action nominal with a possessive.