Subject Participle: -en/-an ("the one who...")

English glues relative clauses onto a noun with a separate word - “who,” “that,” “which.” Turkish has no such word at all. Instead, it reshapes the verb itself into something that behaves like an adjective, and plants it directly in front of the noun it describes.

What this ending does

The subject participle -en/-an turns a verb into a describing word for whichever noun is doing that action. It’s the suffix you reach for whenever the thing you’re describing is the subject of the clause hiding inside the description:

• Koşan adam çok hızlı. — The man who is running is very fast. (adam, “man,” is the one doing the running)
• Türkçe konuşan bir arkadaşım var. — I have a friend who speaks Turkish. (arkadaş, “friend,” is the one doing the speaking)
• Dün bize gelen misafirler çok nazikti. — The guests who came to us yesterday were very polite. (misafirler, “guests,” is who did the coming)

There’s no separate relative pronoun anywhere in these sentences. The participle itself, sitting right before the noun, carries the entire meaning of “who [verbs].”

Forming it

Attach -en or -an directly to the bare verb stem, chosen by simple two-way vowel harmony on the stem’s last vowel. A stem that ends in a vowel inserts a buffer -y- first, since the suffix would otherwise collide with the stem’s own final vowel:

So gel- (to come) gives gelen, and koş- (to run) gives koşan — both consonant-final, no buffer needed. A vowel-final stem like bekle- (to wait) takes the buffer to give bekleyen, and oku- (to read) gives okuyan.

Unlike most Turkish suffixes, this one doesn’t carry any person marking at all — gelen doesn’t distinguish “I who came” from “she who came”; that distinction is made elsewhere in the sentence (usually by the noun itself, or just by context), never on the participle.

Exceptions worth knowing

No tense marking either — present or past is read from context, not from the suffix. Gelen misafir can mean “the guest who is coming” or “the guest who came,” depending on what the rest of the sentence or conversation makes clear. A future-pointing version of this same role uses a different suffix entirely, covered in its own lesson, rather than any variant of -en/-an.

Negation inserts -me/-ma before the participle, with the same buffer -y- that a vowel triggers elsewhere. Tut- (to keep/hold) negates to tut-ma-, and since -ma ends in a vowel, the participle needs its buffer: tutmayan (“the one who doesn’t/didn’t keep”). Sözünü tutmayan bir arkadaşa güvenemezsin. — You can’t trust a friend who doesn’t keep his word.

The participle can stand completely alone, with no noun at all, meaning “the one who…” Gelen by itself is “the one who comes/came.” Pluralize it exactly like any noun, with -ler/-lar, to get “those who…”: Sabah erken kalkanlar kahvaltıyı kaçırmaz. — Those who get up early don’t miss breakfast.

Examples

• Koşan adam çok hızlı. — The man who is running is very fast.
• Türkçe konuşan bir arkadaşım var. — I have a friend who speaks Turkish.
• Dün bize gelen misafirler çok nazikti. — The guests who came to us yesterday were very polite.
• Bu şarkıyı söyleyen kişi çok güzel söylüyor. — The person singing this song sings very beautifully.
• Sabah erken kalkanlar kahvaltıyı kaçırmaz. — Those who get up early don’t miss breakfast. (headless, plural)
• Sözünü tutmayan bir arkadaşa güvenemezsin. — You can’t trust a friend who doesn’t keep his word. (negative)

Try it yourself

Babi, Speafy’s AI tutor, will have you build these noun-plus-participle phrases in real conversation until reaching for a separate word like “who” or “that” stops feeling necessary, and Speafy’s FSRS-based flashcards keep the subject-only role of -en/-an distinct in memory from its non-subject counterpart, -dik, instead of the two blurring into one vague “relative clause ending.”