The Handful of Irregular Stems

One of the quiet joys of Turkish is how few irregular verbs it has. Where French, Spanish, and English each have hundreds, Turkish has essentially two truly irregular verbs — de- "say" and ye- "eat" — plus one verb whose final consonant softens, git- "go", and a memorized-but-not-chaotic set of monosyllables that pick -Ir over -Ar in the aorist. That is the entire list. This page collects all of it so you can learn the exceptions once and trust regularity everywhere else.

de- and ye-: the e becomes a y-glide

The two genuine irregulars are de- ("say") and ye- ("eat"). Their problem is that the stem ends in -e, and before the -(y)Iyor and -(y)AcAK suffixes that e does something no other verb's vowel does: it raises to i and merges into a y-glide.

So instead of the bekle- → bekliyor pattern (where the e simply drops), de- and ye- turn their e into i:

• de-
  • -iyor → diyor "is saying" (not deyor, not deyiyor)
• ye-
  • -iyor → yiyor "is eating"
• de-
  • -ecek → diyecek "will say"
• ye-
  • -ecek → yiyecek "will eat"

The rule in one line: before -yor and -(y)AcAK, the e of de-/ye- raises to i. Everywhere else they behave normally — the past is dedi / yedi, the aorist is der / yer, the infinitive is demek / yemek.

git- softens to gid- before a vowel

The verb git- ("go") is regular in meaning and ending, but its final t obeys a sound rule: a t at the end of a stem softens to d when a vowel-initial suffix attaches, because the consonant now sits between two vowels (this is ordinary voicing of final ç/t/k/p). So:

• before a vowel: git-
  • -iyor → gidiyor "is going"; git-
    • -eceğim → gideceğim "I will go"; git-
      • -er → gider "goes"
• before a consonant or nothing: the t stays — gitmek "to go", gitti "went", git! "go!"

This is not a special verb rule; it is the same softening that turns kitap into kitabı. But git- is the verb where learners notice it most, so it is worth flagging.

et- in compound verbs: edi-

A close cousin is et- ("do/make"), the light verb in hundreds of compounds (teşekkür etmek "to thank", yardım etmek "to help", devam etmek "to continue"). Its t softens to d before a vowel exactly like git-:

• et-
  • -iyor → ediyor: Devam ediyor. "It's continuing."
• et-
  • -eceğim → edeceğim: Sana yardım edeceğim. "I'll help you."

The aorist-vowel monosyllables

The last "irregularity" is milder: it is just a memorized vowel choice. Most monosyllabic verbs form the aorist with -Ar (yap- → yapar, bak- → bakar). But a closed set of common monosyllables takes -Ir instead (al- → alır, gel- → gelir, bil- → bilir, gör- → görür, kal- → kalır, var- → varır). There is no phonological rule that predicts the split — you memorize the -Ir group. The full list lives in the aorist discussion; the point here is that this is the only place where the aorist is unpredictable, and it is a short, fixed list rather than open-ended chaos.

How small the irregular set really is

Compared with English ("go/went/gone", "buy/bought", "be/was/were/been") or with Spanish's stem-changing and irregular preterites, Turkish's irregularity is astonishingly contained:

• Two true irregulars: de-, ye- (vowel raises to i before -yor / -(y)AcAK).
• A regular sound rule affecting verbs ending in t: git- → gid-, et- → ed-, before vowels.
• A memorized but finite aorist-vowel set: the -Ir monosyllables.

Everything else — every tense, every person, every other verb — follows the regular templates without exception. This is genuinely one of the easiest verb systems among major world languages, and naming its three small pockets of irregularity is most of what you need.

Common mistakes

Regularizing de- to deyor is the number-one slip. The e must raise to i: diyor / diyorum.

Likewise ye- raises to i in the future: yiyecek / yiyeceğiz.

Before a vowel, git- softens to gid-: gidiyor, gideceğim, gider.

The light verb et- softens too: ediyorum, edeceğim.

Bil- belongs to the memorized -Ir set: bilir, like gelir, alır, görür.

Key takeaways

• Turkish has essentially two irregular verbs: de- and ye-, whose e raises to i before -(y)Iyor and -(y)AcAK → diyor, yiyor, diyecek, yiyecek.
• Verbs ending in t soften to d before a vowel: git- → gidiyor / gideceğim / gider, et- → ediyor / edeceğim.
• A finite, memorized set of monosyllables takes the -Ir aorist (alır, gelir, bilir, görür, kalır, varır) rather than -Ar.
• Outside these three pockets, the Turkish verb is fully regular — trust the templates.