Uyghur grammar note - Present aorist tense

The present aorist tense in Uyghur is used to describe habitual, repetitive actions or actions scheduled to take place in the immediate future. It can be compared to the Turkish -r present tense. Although sometimes rendered into English as -ing, it does not emphasise on the action in progression at the present moment. If you really want to make a big deal, there's a present continuous tense characterised by the affix -iwat, corresponding directly and strictly to the English present continuous as used in 'I am watching TV at the moment', that is to say, not as in 'I am studying at this unversity' which is more or less the same thing as 'I study at this university, or 'I am going to the cinema this afternoon' which is more or less the same thing as 'I'll go to the cinema this afternoon'.

To be honest, personally I think this tense is pretty jokes. The formation is so easy that if you can't do it correctly, you shouldn't learn Turkic languages. Because:

verb root + i/y + personal endings

The personal endings are basically almost intact personal pronouns, except for first person plural and third person (sg. and pl. again share the same ending), which receive a little bit of understandable modification. The rule for i/y alternation is simple: if the verb root ends in a consonant, it's an i , if a vowel a y. Not that it makes a lot of difference in speech. In fact either way you are going to hear a high front vowel between the verb root and the personal ending. It's only in orthography that you can see the distinction, really.

Now let's move on to the personal endings:

   Singular                         Plural                         

mən   -mən                      biz   -miz

sən      -sən                      silər  -silər

siz       -siz                       

u          -du                        ular  -du

Don't you just LOVE Uyghur (Chagatay conjugation is the same, by the way)? It's basically like saying 'go-I, go-you, go-he, go-we, go-you, go-they' in English!! Even the seemingly irregular bits can be rationalised: b -> m is a classic Turkic thing. Compare Turkish ben and Uyghur mən, Uzbek men. And Uyghur bu (this) and mundaq (this way, thus). The phonetic distance between b and m isn't much at all: they are both bilabial, voiced stops. The only difference is that m is nasal and b isn't. So m here can be seen as a weakened version of b. And b has all the rights to be weakened - it is now the onset of a suffix. As for the intrusive d in the third person which has disturbed the otherwise beautiful regularity, I guess it's just because it sounds a bit silly to say iu. Turkic languages don't really allow diphthongs. For ease of pronunciation, extra sounds are usually inserted.

Let's conjugate two verbs now:

çiqmaq: to come out, to go out, to appear, to happen, to produce

mən  çiqimən               biz  çiqimiz

sən     çiqisən               silər çiqisilər

siz      çiqisiz

u         çiqidu                 ular  çiqidu

işləmək: to work

mən  işləymən             biz  işləymiz

sən     işləysən             silər işləysilər

siz      işləysiz

u         işləydu              ular  işləydu

I think this has covered all. Peace.