Not All Imperative Forms in Turkish Are Created Equal

There are many ways to express imperatives in Turkish, or commands, but be careful! Not all of them are created equal -they vary in politeness. We explain the gradations of politeness of each Turkish imperative form here.

In Turkish, verbs in the imperative mood (indicating a command like, 'drink!' or 'go!' are formed by using the verb root and applying specific suffixes based on the person and formality. For singular informal "you" (sen), the verb root is followed by the "-Ø" (no suffix) or sometimes the "-e" suffix for more emphasis.

For plural or formal "you" (siz), the verb root takes the "-In" suffix, which shows respect or politeness. However, there is yet another level of politeness after this, if you would like to be extra polite, and that would be using the '-InIz' suffix (if you are not familiar with how to read this notation, check out this article).

The key difference between these forms lies in the level of formality and whether the action is directed at one person, multiple people, or includes the speaker. For example, "gel" (come) is informal and singular, while "gelin" (come, plural/formal) is used for multiple people AND/OR to show respect, and geliniz is even more polite and respectful. Check out the diagram below to get a better sense of the overlap of plurality and formality with all of these imperative forms.