The Four Irregular Stems: gitmek, etmek, yemek, demek

Turkish verb stems are remarkably predictable once you know vowel harmony and consonant softening — but four extremely common verbs don’t play entirely by those rules: gitmek (to go), etmek (to do), yemek (to eat), and demek (to say). Learn exactly what happens to these four, and you’ve covered nearly every irregularity you’ll meet in everyday Turkish.

What makes these four stems different

Two separate irregularities are at work, split across the four verbs:

• gitmek and etmek undergo a consonant change that looks like the ordinary softening rule you already know (p/ç/t/k → b/c/d/ğ) — except softening normally skips one-syllable stems, and these two one-syllable stems soften anyway. Git- and et- are two of the handful of one-syllable exceptions to that “monosyllables usually resist softening” guideline.
• yemek and demek undergo a vowel change: in front of certain suffixes, their stem vowel e doesn’t just harmonize — it raises all the way to i, with a y-glide appearing alongside it. Nothing else in ordinary Turkish verb morphology behaves this way.

Both irregularities are triggered only by specific vowel-initial suffixes. Everywhere else, all four verbs behave exactly like the regular stems you already know.

Forming it

gitmek and etmek: the stem-final t softens to d in front of a vowel-initial suffix.

The softened d only ever shows up directly in front of a vowel. The moment a consonant — the negative -mI- or the past tense’s own -ti — stands between the stem and the next sound, the t has nothing to soften against, and it stays t.

yemek and demek: the stem vowel e raises to i in front of -(i)yor and future -(y)AcAk.

The raising only happens directly in front of -(i)yor and -(y)AcAk — both suffixes that would otherwise force the stem’s bare e right next to another vowel. Everywhere else — the negative (where -mI- intervenes), the past, and the aorist — the plain e stays exactly as it is.

Exceptions worth knowing

The negative cancels both irregularities, for the same underlying reason. Because the negative marker -mI- begins with the consonant m, it steps in between the stem and the vowel that would otherwise trigger the change — so gitmiyor keeps its t, and yemiyor/demiyor keep their e, even though the exact same stems softened or raised one line earlier in the affirmative (gidiyor, yiyor, diyor).

Gitmek and etmek don’t drop a vowel — they only soften a consonant; that’s a different phenomenon from vowel-final stems like bekle- (to wait), which lose their own final vowel in front of -iyor. A separate lesson covers that vowel-dropping pattern. Both mechanisms are triggered by the same suffix, but they aren’t the same rule — don’t let the shared trigger make you confuse them.

Etmek is rarely used alone in modern Turkish — it mostly pairs with a noun to form a compound verb. Teşekkür etmek (to thank), yardım etmek (to help), kahvaltı etmek (to have breakfast), and telefon etmek (to call) are everyday combinations; the irregularity works exactly the same way inside the compound as it does for the bare verb — teşekkür ediyorum (“I’m thanking you”) softens its t to d just like ediyor does on its own.

Demek also appears inside the extremely common phrase ne demek (“what does X mean” / “what do you mean”) and the set expression demek istemek (“to mean, to intend to say”). Ne demek istiyorsun? (“What do you mean?”) uses the plain present continuous of istemek — demek itself stays in its bare infinitive form here, so none of the irregularity above applies to it in this phrase.

Examples

• Ben okula gidiyorum. — I’m going to school. (git-, present continuous, softened)
• Sen ne diyorsun? — What are you saying? (de-, present continuous, raised)
• O bana her sabah yardım ediyor. — He/she helps me every morning. (et-, present continuous, softened, compound verb)
• Biz akşam yemeğini birlikte yiyoruz. — We’re eating dinner together. (ye-, present continuous, raised)
• Siz yarın Ankara’ya gidecek misiniz? — Will you go to Ankara tomorrow? (git-, future, softened, question)
• Ben sabahları hiç kahvaltı etmiyorum. — I never have breakfast in the mornings. (et-, negative, no change)
• Dün erken gittim. — I left early yesterday. (git-, simple past, no change)

Notice how the softened and raised forms only show up in the present continuous, future, and aorist rows — the negative and past forms look exactly like what the regular rules would already predict on their own.

Try it yourself

Babi, Speafy’s AI tutor, will drill you on these four verbs across the present continuous, future, negative, and past, until gidiyor, ediyor, yiyor, and diyor stop requiring a conscious double-check, and Speafy’s FSRS-based flashcards keep the look-alike regular forms (gitmiyor, yemiyor) reviewed right alongside the irregular ones so the two never blur together.