The evidential past, -mIş, is the tense for things you did not witness directly — facts you heard from someone else, inferred from evidence, or only just realised. Where the -DI past says “I know this happened, I was there”, the -mIş past says “apparently / it seems / they say it happened”. This page conjugates gelmek (“to come”) through all six persons in affirmative, negative, and question, and then dwells on the form learners find genuinely strange: the first-person gelmişim, which does not mean a plain “I came” but rather “I evidently came / it turns out I came”.
The affirmative paradigm
The suffix -mIş harmonises four ways (-miş, -mış, -muş, -müş) and takes the Type-1 personal endings — the same set the present continuous uses, including the 1sg -im and 1pl -iz.
| Person | Affirmative | English |
|---|---|---|
| ben (I) | gelmişim | I apparently came / it turns out I came |
| sen (you, sg.) | gelmişsin | you apparently came |
| o (he/she/it) | gelmiş | he/she/it apparently came |
| biz (we) | gelmişiz | we apparently came |
| siz (you, pl./formal) | gelmişsiniz | you apparently came |
| onlar (they) | gelmişler | they apparently came |
Note the double s in gelmişsin and gelmişsiniz: one ş belongs to -miş, the other s opens the ending -sin / -siniz. Both must be written — gelmişin is wrong.
The three core flavours of -mIş are worth naming so you can hear which one a sentence carries. Hearsay: you are passing on what someone told you (toplantı yarınmış, “the meeting is tomorrow, I'm told”). Inference: you deduce it from evidence in front of you (yağmur yağmış, yerler ıslak, “it's rained — the ground is wet”). Mirativity / fresh realisation: you have just discovered something, often with surprise (ne kadar büyümüşsün!, “how you've grown!”). All three share one thing: you are not reporting a directly witnessed event in real time, which is exactly what separates -mIş from the plain -DI past.
Hava çok güzelmiş, keşke dışarı çıksaydık.
Apparently the weather was lovely, I wish we'd gone out.
Yağmur yağmış, her yer ıslak.
It's rained — everywhere is wet.
Komşular taşınmış, evleri boşmuş.
The neighbours have apparently moved out; their house is empty (I gather).
The first-person twist
Here is the meaning English speakers find counterintuitive. You normally witness your own actions, so why would you ever report them with the “I didn't see it” tense? Because -mIş in the first person carries surprise, realisation, or lack of awareness at the time — you discover, after the fact, that you did something. Uyumuşum is not “I slept” (that is uyudum); it is “I evidently fell asleep / I must have dozed off”, said when you wake up and realise it. This reading also covers things done while drunk, asleep, or distracted.
Çok yorgunmuşum, koltukta uyuyakalmışım.
I must have been exhausted — I fell asleep on the sofa.
Meğer ben de aynı hatayı yapmışım.
It turns out I made the same mistake too.
Saatlerce yürümüşüz, hiç fark etmemişiz.
We apparently walked for hours and didn't even notice.
The negative paradigm
The negative inserts -mA- before -mIş, and as everywhere, the a/e harmonises (gelmemiş, almamış). The Type-1 endings then follow. The third person is simply gelmemiş; the first person gelmemişim keeps the surprise reading (“apparently I didn't come”).
| Person | Negative | English |
|---|---|---|
| ben | gelmemişim | I apparently didn't come |
| sen | gelmemişsin | you apparently didn't come |
| o | gelmemiş | he/she/it apparently didn't come |
| biz | gelmemişiz | we apparently didn't come |
| siz | gelmemişsiniz | you apparently didn't come |
| onlar | gelmemişler | they apparently didn't come |
Faturayı ödememişim, şimdi gördüm.
I apparently didn't pay the bill — I've just noticed.
Çocuk ödevini yapmamış, defteri boş.
The kid evidently didn't do his homework; the notebook is empty.
The question paradigm
The particle mI follows -mIş with the person riding on the particle, exactly as in the present and future — because -mIş uses Type-1 endings, which migrate onto mI. After the front-unrounded -miş the particle is mi: gelmiş miyim?
| Person | Question (affirmative) | Question (negative) |
|---|---|---|
| ben | gelmiş miyim? | gelmemiş miyim? |
| sen | gelmiş misin? | gelmemiş misin? |
| o | gelmiş mi? | gelmemiş mi? |
| biz | gelmiş miyiz? | gelmemiş miyiz? |
| siz | gelmiş misiniz? | gelmemiş misiniz? |
| onlar | gelmişler mi? | gelmemişler mi? |
The evidential question often means “(so) apparently…? — is that right?”, checking a piece of hearsay rather than asking about a witnessed event.
Toplantı iptal olmuş mu, sen duydun mu?
The meeting's been cancelled, apparently — did you hear that?
Yani ben yanlış adrese mi gelmişim?
So I came to the wrong address, did I?
How this differs from English
English has no grammatical evidentiality. To convey “apparently”, “it seems”, “I gather”, “they say”, or “it turns out”, English bolts on a separate adverb or phrase and leaves the verb alone. Turkish folds all of that into one suffix, -mIş, so the very choice of geldi versus gelmiş tells the listener whether you witnessed the event or are passing on second-hand or inferred information. There is no neutral way to stay silent about your source — you must pick a tense, and that pick leaks your evidence.
The first-person surprise reading is the part with the least English parallel. The closest English gets is “I must have…” or “it turns out I…”, but those are optional commentary; in Turkish the meaning is baked into the form. So uyumuşum and uyudum are not stylistic variants — one says “I realised I'd fallen asleep” and the other says “I slept, and I know it”. Choosing between them is a real decision every time you speak in the past about yourself.
A second place -mIş shows up — and one you should not confuse with the evidential — is the perfect/resultative reading, where it describes a present state resulting from a past action, much like English “has come”. Kapı açılmış can mean “the door has been opened (and is now open)”, focusing on the current result. The line between “evidently opened” and “has opened” is genuinely blurry, and Turkish grammarians treat both as belonging to the same suffix; context and intonation do the disambiguating. For learners, the safe rule is: if you witnessed it, use -DI; if you are reporting, inferring, marvelling, or describing a discovered result, -mIş is at home.
Bütün misafirler çoktan gelmiş, biz geç kalmışız.
All the guests have already arrived — we're the ones who turned out to be late.
Common mistakes
❌ Dün seni aradım ama açmadın, ben de eve gelmişim.
Incorrect for a witnessed action: a plain 'I came home' must be the -DI past — geldim.
✅ Dün seni aradım ama açmadın, ben de eve geldim.
I called you yesterday but you didn't pick up, so I came home.
❌ Sen çok çalışmışın.
Incorrect: 2sg keeps the -ş of -miş plus -sin, giving the double s — çalışmışsın.
✅ Sen çok çalışmışsın.
You've apparently worked a lot.
❌ O gelmemişmi?
Incorrect: the question particle is a separate word — gelmemiş mi?
✅ O gelmemiş mi?
Apparently he didn't come?
❌ Ben gelmiş misin?
Incorrect: the person must agree — 1sg is gelmiş miyim, not gelmiş misin.
✅ Ben gelmiş miyim?
Did I (apparently) come?
❌ Yemeği yemişim ama tadını hatırlamıyorum.
Acceptable only as a realisation; if you simply ate and know it, use yedim.
✅ Yemeği yedim ama tadını hatırlamıyorum.
I ate the meal but I don't remember the taste.
Key takeaways
- Evidential suffix: -mIş
- Type-1 endings → gelmişim, gelmişsin, gelmiş, gelmişiz, gelmişsiniz, gelmişler. Mind the double s in gelmişsin / gelmişsiniz.
- It marks unwitnessed information: hearsay, inference, or fresh realisation.
- The first person gelmişim means “I apparently / it turns out I came” — surprise, not a neutral past. For witnessed events use -DI: geldim.
- Negative: gelmemiş(im). Question: the person rides the particle — gelmiş miyim?
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- The Evidential Past -mIş (Reportative/Inferential)A2 — The evidential past -mIş (gelmiş 'apparently came', yağmur yağmış 'it evidently rained') marks an event as known by hearsay, inference, or fresh surprise rather than direct witness — the single most distinctively Turkish feature for English speakers.
- -mIş as Perfect and ResultativeB1 — Beyond hearsay, -mIş marks the present result of a past event (Yorulmuşsun 'you look tired') and completed states (Pişmiş 'it's done') — and with first-person subjects this resultative reading usually means 'I realize I have…', the basis of the -mIş + olmak perfect.
- Type 1 Endings (-(y)Im set)A1 — The Type 1 personal endings -(y)Im, -sIn, -Ø, -(y)Iz, -sInIz, -lAr mark the subject after the continuous, aorist, future, and evidential tenses and on noun predicates — the same set every time, so you learn them once.
- Evidentiality as a Stance ResourceB2 — How Turkish speakers exploit the -DI / -mIş contrast to manage commitment and responsibility — -DI to vouch as an eyewitness, -mIş to distance yourself ('I only heard it') for gossip, reporting, and tactfully dodging blame.