Lessons · 10 of 18

Can, can't, must

Ability with a helper verb hiding inside the word, and necessity that never conjugates the verb at all.

"Can" looks like a single word — baralama "I can go" — but it's really two verbs in a trench coat. Inside are the a-form of the main verb and the helper al — the same al as alırğa "to take" — wearing the ordinary present endings on top. Our sources carry the negative on every shape of stem: kalalmaydı "he can't stay", cutalmayma "I can't swallow", angılayalmayma "I can't understand". That the helper goes back to the verb "take" is a guess about its history rather than something we have checked in a Karachay source — but the forms themselves are ordinary and written down.

• baralama — I can go
• baralasa — you can go
• baraladı — he can go

With stems that end in a vowel, the coat falls open and you can see both verbs: aşay alama — "I can eat", two words on the page, one meaning.

Saying you can't puts lesson 5's ma on the helper: baralmayma "I can't go", baralmaydı "he can't go". And asking works like the present, particle before the person ending: baralamısa? — "can you go?", kelalamısa? — "can you come?"

Must — the word kerek

Necessity doesn't touch the verb at all. The recipe is three pieces: the person in the "to" form from the pronouns bank, the verb's dictionary form, and the little word kerek "needed":

• menge barırğa kerekdi — I need to go (word for word: to-me to-go it-is-needed)
• senge kelirge kerekdi — you need to come
• bizge aşarğa kerekdi — we need to eat

Only kerek changes, and it behaves like any present-tense verb — including in questions, where the particle takes its usual place before the ending: kerekmidi? — "is it necessary?" So: bizge aşarğa kerekmidi? — "do we need to eat?"

There is a second way to say the same thing, and it is just as ordinary: drop the "to me" and put the person on kerek itself.

• barırğa kerekme — I need to go
• kelirge kereksiz — you all need to come

Both patterns are attested and both are natural — they are two ways of speaking rather than two grammatical categories, so use whichever comes to hand. And note what neither of them does: the main verb stays in its dictionary form throughout. Unlike Turkish and its -malı, Karachay has no ending that means "must" — lesson 17 has more on that.

And that completes the arc. Past, present, two futures, no, questions, edi and everything it carries, the two ways of knowing, the if-forms, can and must — the skeleton of the whole verb system is yours. Every verb's word page lays out all its tables whenever you want to wander.