Saying "Can" in Turkish: -ebilmek / -abilmek

English reuses one small word, “can,” for ability, permission, and polite requests alike. Turkish does something similar with a suffix — but that suffix is actually a whole verb, bilmek (“to know”), grammaticalized onto the back of any other verb.

What this suffix does

Attached to a verb stem, -ebil-/-abil- adds the meaning “can” or “to be able to.” It covers the same range English “can” does:

• Physical or learned ability — Ben yüzebilirim. — I can swim.
• Possibility — O Türkçe konuşabilir. — He/she can speak Turkish.
• Permission — Buraya oturabilir miyim? — May I sit here?
• Polite requests — Yardım edebilir misiniz? — Could you help (me)?

This lesson covers the affirmative forms only — “can,” not “can’t.” Turkish builds the negative with its own distinct pattern, -(y)AmA-, which doesn’t simply bolt -ma/-me onto -ebil- the way most verb negatives work, so it gets its own dedicated lesson.

Forming it

The suffix itself follows two-way vowel harmony — just front/back, not the full four-way split — based on the stem’s last vowel:

If the stem ends in a vowel, a buffer -y- appears before the suffix so two vowels don’t collide: oku- (read) takes -yabil-, giving okuyabil-; bekle- (wait) takes -yebil-, giving bekleyebil-. A consonant-final stem needs no buffer: yap- (do) + -abil- → yapabil-.

The suffix most commonly combines with the aorist tense to express a general, ongoing capability. Because -ebil-/-abil- ends in bil-, and bilmek belongs to a small set of monosyllabic verbs that always take the aorist ending -ir (rather than the -ar/-er most consonant-final stems take), every ability form’s aorist piece is simply -ir — never -ar, -ır, -ur, or -ür. The personal endings after that are the same copula-style set used elsewhere in the present and aorist system:

Exceptions worth knowing

The aorist ending is always -ir, with no vowel variation, because of bilmek’s own irregularity. Regular consonant-final verbs choose between -ar and -er for the aorist (and a handful of monosyllabic verbs like bilmek, gelmek, and görmek take -ir/-ır/-ur/-ür instead) — but since every ability form ends in bil-, that irregular -ir is locked in every time, regardless of what the original verb’s own aorist would have been.

-ebil-/-abil- isn’t locked to the aorist — it can combine with other tenses too, shifting the meaning from “can” to “was able to” or “will be able to.” Dün erken kalkabildim. — I was able to get up early yesterday. (ability suffix + simple past -di, not the aorist) The aorist combination is by far the most common for general statements of capability, which is why this lesson focuses on it, but the suffix itself is a regular building block that layers onto other tenses the same way any verb stem would.

Permission and polite-request uses rely on the question form, not a different suffix. Buraya oturabilir miyim? isn’t really asking whether the speaker is capable of sitting — it functions as “May I sit here?” The grammar is identical to an ordinary ability question; only the real-world function shifts.

Examples

• Ben yarın gelebilirim. — I can come tomorrow.
• Sen bu şarkıyı söyleyebilir misin? — Can you sing this song?
• O beş dil konuşabilir. — He/she can speak five languages.
• Biz bu akşam erken çıkabiliriz. — We can leave early this evening.
• Siz bu soruyu cevaplayabilir misiniz? — Could you (please) answer this question?
• Onlar hafta sonu bize gelebilirler. — They can come to our place this weekend.

Every sentence keeps the same shape — stem, ability suffix, aorist -ir, personal ending — with only the vowel harmony and the question particle changing across them.

Try it yourself

Babi, Speafy’s AI tutor, will have you turn plain statements into “can you…?” questions and back, so the -ebilir/-abilir shape and its personal endings stop requiring a conscious check, and Speafy’s FSRS-based flashcards keep the irregular -ir ending reviewed often enough that it never tempts you toward a regular -ar/-er guess.