When a Verb Stem Already Ends in a Vowel: -iyor's Vowel-Drop Rule

Turkish has a strict rule that never gets exceptions: two vowels never sit side by side within a word. That rule collides head-on with the present continuous suffix -(i)yor, because dozens of common verb stems — bekle- (to wait), başla- (to start), oku- (to read) — already end in a vowel of their own. Something has to give, and what gives is always the stem.

What this rule does

When a verb stem’s last sound is already a vowel, and the suffix you’re attaching also starts with a vowel, Turkish doesn’t just jam the two vowels together. Instead, the stem’s final vowel is deleted, and -iyor’s own connecting vowel takes its place — harmonized to the stem exactly as it would be for a consonant-final verb:

• bekle- (to wait) → bekl- + -iyor → bekliyor
• başla- (to start) → başl- + -ıyor → başlıyor
• ağla- (to cry) → ağl- + -ıyor → ağlıyor
• anla- (to understand) → anl- + -ıyor → anlıyor

In every one of these, the result has exactly one vowel between the consonant before it and the -yor that follows — never two.

Forming it

The connecting vowel that survives is chosen by ordinary four-way vowel harmony, reading off the stem’s own last vowel before it gets dropped:

For stems ending in a, ı, e, or i, the change is visible, because the connecting vowel is a different sound from the vowel it replaces: anla-’s a disappears and an ı appears in its place, giving anlıyor — not the anlaıyor you’d get from simply adding the pieces together.

For stems already ending in o, u, ö, or ü, the change looks invisible, because the connecting vowel that harmony selects after a rounded stem is the very same rounded vowel the stem already ends in. Oku-’s final u is technically replaced, but replaced by another u — so okuyor looks like the vowel was simply “kept,” when really it was dropped and reharmonized to an identical sound. Uyu- (to sleep) → uyuyor and büyü- (to grow) → büyüyor work the same way.

Exceptions worth knowing

This vowel-drop is specific to -(i)yor — it is not how Turkish generally handles vowel-final stems meeting a vowel-initial suffix. The future suffix -(y)AcAk, for example, doesn’t drop anything: it inserts a buffer consonant -y- and leaves the stem’s vowel fully intact. Bekle- + future gives bekleyecek (“will wait”), keeping the e that bekliyor drops, and başla- + future gives başlayacak (“will start”), keeping the a that başlıyor drops. The same stem can lose its vowel in front of one suffix and keep it in front of another — the behavior belongs to the specific suffix, not to some general rule about vowel-final verbs.

The negative blocks the vowel drop entirely, because the negative marker is consonant-initial. -mI- starts with the consonant m, so it sits between the stem’s final vowel and -yor, and nothing is forced into contact. Anla- keeps its full a in anlamıyor (an-la-mı-yor), even though the very same stem loses that a in the affirmative anlıyor (an-lı-yor) one row away. Compare the pair directly: anlıyorum (“I understand,” vowel dropped) against anlamıyorum (“I don’t understand,” vowel kept).

A low back a at the end of a dropped stem can still be heard faintly influencing the result in casual speech, but the written/standard form always shows the fully harmonized ı or i. Stick to the table above rather than a stem-by-stem exception list — this rule has no irregular exceptions of its own once you know which vowel the stem ends in. (The genuinely irregular verbs, yemek and demek, are covered in their own dedicated lesson — they raise their vowel all the way to i rather than simply dropping it, which is a different process from the one here.)

Examples

• Ben Türkçe öğrenmeye başlıyorum. — I’m starting to learn Turkish. (başla-, 1st sg., vowel dropped)
• Sen beni bekliyor musun? — Are you waiting for me? (bekle-, 2nd sg., question)
• Çocuk neden ağlıyor? — Why is the child crying? (ağla-, 3rd sg.)
• Biz yeni bir kitap okuyoruz. — We’re reading a new book. (oku-, 1st pl., rounded stem, no visible change)
• Bebek hızla büyüyor. — The baby is growing fast. (büyü-, 3rd sg., rounded stem)
• Onlar olayı hâlâ anlamıyorlar. — They still don’t understand the situation. (anla-, negative, vowel kept — contrast with the affirmative anlıyorlar)
• Siz onu dinliyor musunuz? — Are you (pl.) listening to him/her? (dinle-, 2nd pl., question)

Try it yourself

Babi, Speafy’s AI tutor, will have you build the same sentence first in the affirmative and then in the negative, so the contrast between a dropped vowel (anlıyor) and a kept one (anlamıyor) becomes automatic rather than something you stop to recalculate, and Speafy’s FSRS-based flashcards make sure the invisible rounded-stem cases (okuyor, büyüyor) get reviewed just as often as the visible ones, so you don’t start assuming they’re simply “regular” and skip the rule underneath them.