gördüm

Gördüm is a Turkish verb form meaning I saw. It is the first-person singular simple past tense of the verb görmek (to see). The form is built from the verb stem gör-, the past tense marker -dü (a vowel-harmony variant of -di/-du/-dı), and the first-person singular suffix -m, resulting in görd-dü-m in pronunciation and spelling, commonly written as gördüm.

In usage, gördüm conveys that the speaker completed the act of seeing at a specific time in the past. It can be followed by a temporal adverb or a direct object, as in Dün gördüm or Gördüm seni. The past tense is often used in narrative or conversational past actions, and Turkish distinguishes this form from other persons and numbers with corresponding suffixes (gördün, gördü, gördük, gördünüz, gördüler).

Related forms include the other persons in the past tense: gördün (you saw), gördü (he/she/it saw), gördük (we saw), gördünüz (you all saw), and gördüler (they saw). The negative form is görmedim (I did not see), formed by inserting the negative prefix and modifying the tense accordingly.

Pronunciation centers on the stem vowel: the verb stem gör- contains ö, which influences suffix vowels through vowel harmony, yielding the characteristic appearance of gördüm with the umlauted vowels and the d consonant. Gördüm is common in spoken Turkish and appears in written Turkish as well, across both everyday and literary contexts.