Impersonal and Generic Statements

When you want to say "you can't smoke here," "first you boil the water," or "people say it's going to rain," English reaches for a vague you, a vague people, or a vague one. Turkish almost never does. Instead, for the most common of these — rules, instructions, signs, and general truths — it deletes the subject entirely and puts the verb into the impersonal passive. The result is a sentence with no agent at all, and that is exactly the point: nobody in particular smokes, enters, or boils the water; the statement is about the action itself.

The impersonal passive: a verb with no subject

Turkish forms the passive by adding -Il / -In / -n to the verb stem (the choice depends on the final sound; see the full treatment of the passive in -Il). With a transitive verb the passive is ordinary: the object becomes the subject. But Turkish also lets you passivize intransitive verbs — verbs that have no object to promote, like gitmek (to go), girmek (to enter), çıkmak (to go out). The passive of an intransitive verb has nothing to become the subject, so it ends up with no subject whatsoever, fixed in the third-person singular. This is the impersonal passive, and it is the idiomatic Turkish way to talk about what one does, may do, or may not do.

Literally this is "from here how is-gone" — gidilir is the passive of gitmek, with no subject. English has to invent a you or one to translate it; Turkish has none.

These are exactly the words you see on signs. Girilmez and içilmez are negative passive aorists — "is-not-entered," "is-not-smoked" — stating a flat general rule with no one named as the actor. A sign that read giremezsin ("you can't enter," second person) would feel oddly personal, as if addressed to one specific reader.

Instructions and procedures

Because it strips out the actor, the impersonal passive is the standard voice of instructions and recipes. A recipe does not tell you to do anything; it states what is done. Each step is an impersonal passive, usually in the aorist.

Yola çıkılır — "is-set-out onto the road" — describes the customary procedure with no one named. The English translations smuggle in a you, but the Turkish has no second person anywhere; the verb form alone carries the generic meaning.

The third-person plural for "they say / people say"

A second strategy covers reported general opinion, gossip, and hearsay: the unmarked third-person plural, with no pronoun, meaning "they" in the vague sense of "people in general." This is the Turkish equivalent of English "they say…" or French on dit.

There is no real "they" here — diyorlar just means "people say." This is the everyday way to report a rumour or a widely held belief without committing to a source.

insan and kişi as generic 'one'

When you genuinely need a noun in subject position — for example to attach an adjective or build a longer clause — Turkish uses insan (person, human) or kişi (person, individual) as a generic "one," much like English literary "one" or German man. İnsan is by far the more common in speech.

Here insan is a real grammatical subject and the verb agrees with it in the third-person singular. Use this when the impersonal passive would be clumsy — typically when there is a predicate adjective (yorgun olunca, "when one is tired") rather than a plain action.

Why English can't do this directly

English has no dedicated impersonal voice, so it patches the gap with three different vague words — you, one, they — none of which is quite neutral. You can sound like an accusation, one sounds stiff and formal, and they needs an antecedent that isn't there. Turkish sidesteps all of this with a single grammatical move: remove the subject and mark the verb. The closest English parallel is the agentless passive ("smoking is not permitted here"), but Turkish extends that to verbs English can't passivize at all — you cannot say "it is gone from here" in English, yet buradan gidilir is perfectly ordinary Turkish.

This is the heart of generic statements in Turkish: the language prefers to defocus the actor entirely rather than name a vague one. Get comfortable with the impersonal passive and you will sound markedly more native in exactly the situations — signs, rules, recipes, general truths — where learners most often give themselves away.

Common mistakes

A sign or general rule takes the impersonal passive, not a personal sen. İçemezsin addresses one specific person; içilmez states a rule for everyone.

To ask the generic "how do you get there," use the passive gidilir. The version with sen asks about one specific person's habit, which is not what you mean.

Recipe and procedure steps are impersonal passives in Turkish; the personal sen version sounds like you are bossing one particular cook around.

For the generic "one," use insan in the singular, not the plural insanlar — the plural makes a factual claim about real people rather than a general truth.

Key takeaways

• The impersonal passive of intransitive verbs (gidilir, girilmez, içilmez) is the idiomatic Turkish way to express generic "one/you/people"; it has no subject and stays in the third-person singular.
• It is the default voice for signs, rules, instructions, and recipes — typically in the aorist.
• Use the bare third-person plural (diyorlar) for "they say / people say."
• Use insan (or kişi) as a generic "one" when you need an actual noun in subject position, usually in the singular.
• Avoid translating the English generic you with Turkish sen — it sounds personal and is a giveaway error.