Lessons · 8 of 18

The two pasts

One says a thing happened. The other says it has happened — and that its result is still standing.

English has two ways of putting something in the past — "he went" and "he has gone" — and most of the time it lets you choose freely. Karachay has the same two, and cares more about which you pick.

• ol üyge bardı — he went home
• ol üyge barğandı — he has gone home

The first is the definite past from lesson 2: a finished event, stated as settled fact. Something happened, and that is the end of it.

The second is the perfect. It is built on the participle barğan — the one that went — with the present tense's person endings on top, which is exactly what it means: the going is over, but its result is still standing in front of you. He is not here. The house is empty.

• men barğanma — I have gone
• sen barğansa — you have gone
• ol barğandı — he/she/it has gone
• biz barğanbız — we have gone
• siz barğansız — you all have gone
• ala barğandıla — they have gone

So men anı körgenme is "I have seen it" — and the point is that I still carry what I saw. If you only mean that the seeing happened and is done, men anı kördüm says that.

How you know, and why it leans

Here is a habit worth having, though it is a habit rather than a rule. Speakers reach for the perfect when they did not see the thing themselves — when they were told, or worked it out from what they found. That follows from what the form means: if all you have is the result, the result is all you can honestly report.

• ol üyge bardı — he went home (I was there; I saw him leave)
• ol üyge barğandı — he has gone home (someone told me, or I came by and found the lights off)

Lean on that and you will sound natural. But it is a tendency in how people speak, not something the ending marks. Karachay-Balkar has no ending that says "I did not witness this" — no mış the way Turkish does — and the grammars call these two forms the definite past and the perfect, nothing more. Retelling the news and family stories from before you were born do sit comfortably in the perfect. That is the form doing its ordinary job, not a second job.

A small sound change

On back-vowel stems that end in a voiceless sound, the participle's ğ hardens to h, and the perfect carries it along: aythandı "he has said it", tabhanma "I have found it". Front stems never do this: kelgendi "he has come". Your ear will sort it out long before your grammar does.

Watch the second one. The stem is tap, but the p softens to a b in front of the ending — tabhanma, not taphanma. Karachay texts are one-sided about this, and it catches everyone.

When you are only working it out

There is a third thing you can do with that participle, and it is the natural next step from a result you did not see happen: put bolur after it — the same bolur that means "it will be" — and you get a conclusion rather than a report.

• ol üyge barğan bolur — he must have gone home
• ol aşağan bolur — he must have eaten
• ol üyge barmağan bolur — he must not have gone home

Say it when you are reasoning backwards from what you can see now. The "not" goes on the main verb, not on bolur — it is the going you are denying, not your own conclusion. And bolur is what carries the person, so barğan bolursa is "you must have gone".