Vergangenheit: die berichtete Form auf -mış

Turkish marks how you know something about the past. The suffix -mış / -miş / -muş / -müş (duyulan geçmiş zaman, the "heard past") is for events you did not witness: things someone told you, things you worked out from the evidence, and things you have just noticed.

How to form it

Negative: gelmemiş (he apparently didn't come), yazmamışım.

Three uses

• Hearsay: Ali dün gelmiş. - Ali came yesterday (so I'm told). Hava yarın güzel olacakmış. - Apparently the weather will be nice tomorrow.
• Inference: you see wet streets in the morning: Gece yağmur yağmış. - It (must have) rained in the night.
• Surprise: Ne kadar büyümüşsün! - How you've grown! (what an aunt says at Bayram)

It is also the tense of fairy tales, which traditionally open with Bir varmış, bir yokmuş... - "Once there was, once there wasn't..."

-dı or -mış?

English adds "apparently" or "I heard"; Turkish builds it into the verb. Using -dı for gossip you merely heard sounds as if you are vouching for it, and using -mış for your own actions sounds as if you were asleep at the time: Uyuyakalmışım! - I must have dozed off!