Breakdown of O ordu hem hızlı hem cesurmuş.
o
that / he / she / it
hızlı
fast
hem
both / and (used in pairs as both... and...)
cesur
brave
ordu
army
Questions & Answers about O ordu hem hızlı hem cesurmuş.
Why is the "apparently was" suffix -muş only attached to cesur and not to hızlı?
When you list adjectives connected by conjunctions like ve (and) or hem ... hem ... (both ... and), Turkish usually only attaches the tense or "to be" suffix to the very last word in the list. The -muş at the end of cesurmuş automatically applies to hızlı as well, meaning they were both apparently fast and brave.
What is the exact difference in meaning between cesurdu and cesurmuş?
cesurdu uses the definite past tense, meaning "was brave" as a known fact or something you witnessed yourself. cesurmuş uses the reported/inferential past tense (-miş), which means "was apparently brave" or "I heard they were brave." You use cesurmuş if you read about this army in a history book or heard a story about them, rather than seeing them with your own eyes.
How do you use hem ... hem ... in a sentence?
The structure hem ... hem ... translates to "both ... and ...". You place a hem immediately before each of the words or phrases you want to link. In this sentence, it sits before hızlı (fast) and cesur (brave) to emphasize that the army possessed both of these traits at the same time.
Why did the reported past suffix take the form -muş instead of -miş or -mış?
This suffix follows 4-way vowel harmony. Since the last vowel in the word cesur is u, the suffix must match it by taking the u form, becoming -muş.
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