The Optative -(y)A and the Subjunctive Sense

The imperative lets you command other people, but you cannot command yourself — there is no imperative "let me go" or "let's go." That job belongs to a separate mood, the optative, built with the suffix -(y)A. In modern Turkish the optative is overwhelmingly a first-person form: gideyim "let me go / shall I go," gidelim "let's go." These two are among the most useful verb forms in the whole language, because every time you offer to do something, propose a joint action, or think aloud about what to do, you are in optative territory. This page teaches the base forms and their wishing-and-suggesting meanings; for the very common question use ("Shall I…?", "Shall we…?"), see optative questions.

The optative paradigm

The core vowel A is two-way (e / a). Three of these six cells are everyday spoken Turkish and three are essentially literary or fossilised — knowing which is which saves you from sounding like an old prayer book.

The two forms you will actually use

In living speech, the optative collapses almost entirely onto the first person. -(y)AyIm is "let me / shall I," used when you volunteer or propose to do something yourself, and -(y)AlIm is "let's," used to propose a shared action.

This is the single best place to feel what the optative means: it expresses an action that does not yet exist but that the speaker is willing to bring about. Başlayalım doesn't report that we are starting; it proposes that we start. That gap between "is happening" and "let's make it happen" is the heart of the mood.

The buffer y after vowel stems

As with other vowel-initial suffixes, a buffer -y- appears when the stem ends in a vowel, so vowels never collide. bekle- "wait" → bekleyeyim "let me wait," bekleyelim "let's wait"; başla- "start" → başlayalım "let's start"; oku- "read" → okuyalım "let's read."

To negate, insert -mA- before the optative ending exactly as everywhere else: gitmeyeyim "let me not go," gitmeyelim "let's not go," acele etmeyelim "let's not rush." The negative pulls stress onto the syllable before -mA-, just as it does in the negative imperative.

The subjunctive sense: wishes and the third person

Here is the deeper insight for English speakers. English has thin remnants of a subjunctive of wishing — "God save the Queen," "Heaven help us," "long live the king," "come what may." Notice these all use a bare base verb in a slot where you would normally expect an inflected form, and they all express a wish rather than a fact. The Turkish 3rd-person optative -(y)A (gele, ola) is exactly this category — and it is alive mainly in fixed blessings, curses, and prayers.

The form olmasın "may it not be" and iyileşesin "may you recover" both carry this wishing force. Outside such set phrases and elevated style, the bare 3rd-person gele "may he come" sounds archaic or literary; in ordinary speech you would use the 3rd-person imperative gelsin "let him come" instead. This is a crucial division of labour: for first person ("let me / let's") Turkish uses the optative, but for a real third-person command ("let him do it") it normally uses the imperative -sIn, reserving the optative -(y)A for blessings and wishes.

Frozen-in optative idioms

Because the optative is the mood of wishing, a great many fixed expressions are built on it, and learners should recognise them as whole units rather than parse them every time. Diyelim ki… "let's say that…" introduces a hypothesis; görelim "let's see"; bakalım "let's see / we'll see," tacked onto sentences as a softener; ne yapalım "what can we do" as a shrug of acceptance.

These idioms reward memorisation: bakalım, görelim, ne yapalım, diyelim ki appear constantly in casual conversation and give your speech a natural, idiomatic rhythm. For the broader repertoire of proposing and offering — including the aorist alternative — see suggestions and offers, and for the closely related "must/should" sense see the necessitative -mAlI.

Common mistakes

The future -(y)AcAK states what will happen; the optative -(y)AlIm proposes that it happen. English blurs this with "we'll go," but Turkish keeps the prediction and the proposal in different moods.

The recurring theme: English uses one loose "let's/will/let him" cluster, while Turkish sorts these into the future (prediction), the optative (first-person proposal and wishes), and the imperative (true third-person command). Pick the mood by what you actually mean.

Key takeaways

• The optative -(y)A is the "let me / let's / may" mood and the closest Turkish gets to an English subjunctive of wishing.
• The two high-frequency forms are -(y)AlIm "let's" (gidelim, başlayalım) and -(y)AyIm "let me / shall I" (gideyim, bakayım).
• A buffer -y- appears after vowel stems (bekleyelim, başlayalım); the A is two-way (e / a).
• Use the future for predictions and the optative for proposals — gideceğiz "we will go" ≠ gidelim "let's go."
• The bare third-person optative (gele, ola) survives mainly in wishes and blessings (Allah korusun, geçmiş olsun); for a real third-person command use the imperative -sIn.
• For the "Shall I / Shall we?" question use, see optative questions; for proposing in general, suggestions and offers.