Wide Tense = Quantum Tense
I think I mentioned it in an article about Hereke, barely touching it, though. One thing that confuses foreigners who try to learn Turkish (like expats or diplomats) and those in the acquired perception group who forgot it after learning another language is the present tense, which unfortunately does not exist, contrary to popular belief. It is one of the primary sources of disinformation.
Just like German, Romanian etc, present tense is packed into present continuous tense. Yet, every language book I have seen practically says there is one in Turkish, and shows what we call “wide tense” as the English equivalent (or any language having a present tense) for it. As any English speaker trying to learn Turkish will testify, probably even before reading this article, they are not the same. And this leads to a state of confusion where Discordia is probably having the time of her life.
Let us take a typical and popular phrase in English, for instance “I love you”. This will translate to Turkish as “Seni seviyorum”, in present continuous tense, of course. It is also possible to conjugate it in present tense, “Seni severim” however, not only its meaning will drastically change, it will open an array of probabilities where the exact meaning will have to interpreted depending on the context it is used. It may have a meaning related to threat, jealousy, hatred and trust me, only the smallest probability is assigned to affection.
In an average language course, this phenomenon is explained simply by saying Turkish does not use present tense for phrases like “I love you”. Really? Has it ever? Take the properly named wide tense out, Turkish becomes a very easy language to learn. The real use of the tense becomes only clear if any of those geniuses understand that Turkish uses wide tense in lieu of modal verbs in English. Yes, Turkish has no verbs like might, would, had better etc. Lacking them, these are expressed in wide tense phrases. Is wide tense not used for present tense? Yes, 10% of the time.
This anti-deterministic nature of the tense makes it very popular among politicians (ours). They adore it. Sentence after sentence, phrases of wide tense follow each other, all with their associated arrays of probabilities. It is very easy to deny something if used in wide tense. This is frightening because I occasionally come across a comment made by our politicians appear in foreign media, translated to English. I see commitment after commitment and yet another commitment being made in the English copies whereas, in the Turkish copy, I see a probability soup. I really have no idea how our politicians communicate with their counterparts as I do not have the slightest doubt that they do not understand each other.
