Lessons · 9 of 18

If, would, and would have

Every kind of "if" gets its own form — and one ending decides whether you missed a trip or never knew about it.

English stretches one word — "if" — over several different jobs. Karachay gives each job its own form, and once you see them side by side, the system is friendlier than it looks. Everything here reuses parts you already own: the participles, the endings from lesson 2, and the little verb edi from lesson 7.

If — open and real

Stem plus sa (or se), then the past-type person endings: barsam "if I go", barsang "if you go", barsa "if he goes". One form covers "if I go" and "if I will go" — like English, no future marking inside an if-clause. The result half usually takes the open future: barsam, körürme — "if I go, I will see."

If it's true that it happened

barğan esem — "if I did indeed go" — reasons about a past you concede or aren't sure of: the participle plus ese, which conjugates just like edi. This one doesn't imagine a different past; it thinks out loud about what may actually have happened — barğan ese "if he really did go…"

If it had happened

barğan bolsam — "if I had gone" — imagines the past that didn't happen: the participle plus bolsam, "if I were". Its natural partner is the "would have" form from lesson 7, and together they make the classic regret: bilgen bolsam, barlık edim — "if I had known, I would have gone."

The result halves, to keep them straight: barır edi "he would go" for the open what-ifs, barlık edi "he would have gone" for the ones whose time has passed.

The Six Flags problem

A summer trip to Six Flags happens without you. When you hear about it afterward, you have two things you might say, one ending apart — and the language makes you pick the honest one.

• barırğa izlegen edim — "I had wanted to go": you knew about the trip, and the wanting really happened
• barırğa izlerik edim — "I would have wanted to go": you're only learning of it now; the wanting never got its chance

It's the same mirror as lesson 7: izlegen looks backward at a want that existed, izlerik looks forward from a past where it never did. Pick the wrong one and you've either told your friends they ignored your wishes, or admitted you never had any.