Questions & Answers about Genç kral hiç adil değilmiş.
Why use -miş here instead of the regular past tense ending -di?
Using the inferential past suffix -miş (değilmiş) instead of the regular past tense -di (değildi) shows that the speaker didn't witness this firsthand. They are reporting what they heard from a story, read in a book, or figured out later. It translates to "I've heard the young king wasn't fair" or "It turns out he wasn't fair."
How do you make a negative sentence with the -miş suffix?
For nouns and adjectives, the suffix attaches directly to the negative word değil. You leave the adjective (adil) alone and combine değil + miş to get değilmiş (apparently was not).
Why is the suffix -miş and not -mış?
The inferential past suffix follows 4-way vowel harmony. Because it attaches to the word değil, we look at the last vowel in that specific word, which is an 'i'. Therefore, the suffix takes the 'i' form: -miş.
I learned that hiç means "never". Why does it mean "at all" in this sentence?
Hiç does mean "never" or "none" in many contexts. However, when you pair it with a negative word like değil (or a negative verb), it acts as an intensifier. In these negative sentences, it usually translates to "not at all."