Learn Turkish: Şüpheli bize kaçıyor gibi geldi. - It seemed to us like the suspect was escaping.

Şüpheli bize kaçıyor gibi geldi.

It seemed to us like the suspect was escaping.

Breakdown of Şüpheli bize kaçıyor gibi geldi.

Questions & Answers about Şüpheli bize kaçıyor gibi geldi.

Why do we use the present continuous tense in kaçıyor when the main verb geldi is in the past tense?

Turkish uses relative tense in these types of clauses. You describe the action exactly as it was happening at that specific moment. Back then, the suspect was in the middle of escaping, so we use kaçıyor. The main verb geldi takes the past tense to show that the impression itself happened in the past.

How exactly does gibi geldi translate to 'it seemed'?

The phrase gibi gelmek literally translates to 'to come like'. When you pair it with a dative pronoun like bize (to us), you are literally saying 'it came to us like...'. This is the standard Turkish structure for expressing personal impressions or how a situation felt to someone.

If there were multiple suspects (şüpheliler), would the final verb become geldiler?

No, it would stay as geldi. The grammatical subject of geldi is not the suspect, but rather the entire abstract situation ('the suspect escaping'). Because a situation acts as a singular 'it', the verb gelmek remains in the third-person singular regardless of who is doing the escaping.

Why is bize placed between şüpheli and kaçıyor instead of at the beginning?