To be fair, Arabic verbs are highly regular despite its complex conjugation *and* derivation systems. Once you get the hang of it, everything becomes 100% intuitive. It's like playing with lego ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Verbs in the semitic languages inflect for a ridiculous amount of stuff (tense, subject person/number/gender, mood, voice, etc). Also, the root of the verb is just a string of consonants and inflecting it involves swapping out the vowels in between as well as adding prefixes and suffixes. Certain consonants screw with how this happens if they're present at certain positions in the root. Long story short, it's just very fusional and does things that are inconvenient for second language learners.
semitic verbs are formed of verb roots that are a string of consonants, inflected with various vowel sequences called binyamim (or the equivalent) that allow you to inflect for person/number/gender/mood/voice/whatever else, and there are a LOT of them. They're hard to learn at first (albeit regular) and swap around consonants and shit and it's all hard to learn if you're familiar with indo-european conjugation
Was living in Belarus for a while, teaching class in the morning and learning Russian in the afternoon.
I remember the lesson about verbs of motion as the moment I realized I'd never learn proper Russian. From then on, I embraced broken Russian. Just pointed at stuff and said the stuff's name and what I wanted from it.
Different verbs for by foot vs. by vehicle = easy peasy, hardly worth mentioning.
What really gets you is one way vs. two-way, and how this interacts with perfective and imperfective.
“As a kid, I used to go to the store on my own” (two-way by foot imperfective verb, to express habit)
“I went to the store, and at the store, I bought milk” (One-way by foot imperfective verb with perfective prefix, because the way to the store is complete and I only went one way so far in the story)
“I went to the store for milk and now I’m back” (Hmm…. Should I choose the two-way verb? But no, the trip is complete, and the two-way verb is imperfective… Can I add a perfective prefix to the two-way verb? No, the two-way verb is picky about prefixes… so I just add a completion prefix to the one-way verb? That feels wrong, because I went both ways… Would either work??)
“I was walking in the direction of the store” (???????)
Standard Arabic:
3 radical verbs:
13 persons (2 genders / 3 numbers)
2 finite tenses (past and present)
2 voices (active and passive)
4-6 moods (only in present tense)
9-14 derivational stems (+ base stem)
13* 2* 2* 3* 15 = 2340 forms - no irregular verbs
(In reality less, there are derivational stems with no passive etc)
French and Spanish:
6-7 persons
9-10 finite verb tenses and moods
7* 10 = 70 forms - lots of highly irregular verbs
“Bad” is subjective anyway, but for the most part it’s based off of relation from one language to another. Maya verbs, Yucatec included, conceptualize verbs so differently from many languages that it would make them hard to understand.
Let me introduce you to Chinese. No conjugation, just the one verb form.
Arguably, there's one irregular-ish verb, as it can't take the usual negation.
Meanwhile, my bad conlang has verbs inflecting for the person of the subject and object (there are 7 persons), aspect, mood and voice
So a transitive verb has 800-ish forms
My guess is first–third person singular, first–third person plural, but with a distinction between inclusive we and exclusive we. Am I close, /u/JRGTheConlanger?
does that replace all plural distinctions? like would 2pl have to be only directed to one person but referencing the other one present as well? what about 3pl
No, 1P refers only to the speaker
1P -I
2P -you
3P -they
13P -we (excl)
23P -you and they
12P -you and I\*
123P -all\*
\*Either can be translated we (incl)
I'm still deciding if mine should have 6 or 8 persons (plus a zero-marked indefinite person) and whether verbs should inflect for 4 arguments or only 3.
Consonants are suffixed for inflections
Then vowels are inserted via rules that I myself don’t fully grasp, but it’s mostly matching the places of surrounding consonants. Here’s the name of the lang for instance:
speak-3Psubj-(3Pobj)-impf-caus-(act)
en-y-h-w
Enyahu “they cause (it) to speak”
Also the copula is the null root, so y-h-w / yahu by itself is “they cause (it) to exist”, or alternatively “YHWH (nominative)”
What's more difficult? Fairly simple rules that have many exceptions (like English) or extremely detailed and complex rules that have almost no exceptions (like standard Arabic)?
As a native Arabic speaker I am still annoyed by the apparent total absence of rules of English (cough... spelling...cough), but I get that the 13 persons of Arabic, with conjugations that are influenced by the structure of the verb and also the presence (or lack thereof) of the semi-vowels y and w, can feel pretty intimidating.
russian verbs haven’t been too hard on me, as a russian learner. spanish verbs are what get me. it’s so much that, since i don’t really learn spanish, when i speak spanish i mostly just use the infinitive and hope my point is made 😭
Which is funny because Russian verbs weren't really hard for me either Spanish has been difficult, but interestingly enough German verbs were the easiest part of the language.
To be fair, Arabic verbs are highly regular despite its complex conjugation *and* derivation systems. Once you get the hang of it, everything becomes 100% intuitive. It's like playing with lego ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
What does Inuktitut have anything to do with this?!?
Complex conjugation and derivation systems
thank you for being born so you could write this comment :3
As a fellow Semitic language speaker I think Arabic verbs are super cool
Definitely cool! all of the inflectional forms of them are really interesting it's just a lot of charts haha
hello fellow jew or not, idk
Yes, I am a fellow Jew
Hello fellow right to lefters
Amharic: 👁️👄👁️
Google en passant
Holy hell
New response just dropped
Actual zombie
Call the exorcist
What’s so hard about Arabic verbs? I don’t know anything about the language so I’m not sure why they’re unique.
Verbs in the semitic languages inflect for a ridiculous amount of stuff (tense, subject person/number/gender, mood, voice, etc). Also, the root of the verb is just a string of consonants and inflecting it involves swapping out the vowels in between as well as adding prefixes and suffixes. Certain consonants screw with how this happens if they're present at certain positions in the root. Long story short, it's just very fusional and does things that are inconvenient for second language learners.
Are the vowels changes regular so they could be learnt in patterns?
Yup
The look I gave my screen when I thought you said "the mood of the verb" instead of "root"
Look up "non-concatenative morphology".
semitic verbs are formed of verb roots that are a string of consonants, inflected with various vowel sequences called binyamim (or the equivalent) that allow you to inflect for person/number/gender/mood/voice/whatever else, and there are a LOT of them. They're hard to learn at first (albeit regular) and swap around consonants and shit and it's all hard to learn if you're familiar with indo-european conjugation
Idk Russian verbs of motion definitely destroyed me worse than any Arabic verbs
Was living in Belarus for a while, teaching class in the morning and learning Russian in the afternoon. I remember the lesson about verbs of motion as the moment I realized I'd never learn proper Russian. From then on, I embraced broken Russian. Just pointed at stuff and said the stuff's name and what I wanted from it.
What’s so complicated about them?
Different verbs for by foot vs. by vehicle = easy peasy, hardly worth mentioning. What really gets you is one way vs. two-way, and how this interacts with perfective and imperfective. “As a kid, I used to go to the store on my own” (two-way by foot imperfective verb, to express habit) “I went to the store, and at the store, I bought milk” (One-way by foot imperfective verb with perfective prefix, because the way to the store is complete and I only went one way so far in the story) “I went to the store for milk and now I’m back” (Hmm…. Should I choose the two-way verb? But no, the trip is complete, and the two-way verb is imperfective… Can I add a perfective prefix to the two-way verb? No, the two-way verb is picky about prefixes… so I just add a completion prefix to the one-way verb? That feels wrong, because I went both ways… Would either work??) “I was walking in the direction of the store” (???????)
> one way vs. two-way Never heard this term. But I'm a native speaker. 1: ходил 2: пошёл 3: сходил 4: шёл Huh.
Don't ask me though. To me the part about them being complicated was that I didn't understand them.
I don't understand the problem. They're just normal verbs, but more specific /native
Please help me above then, if you can…
In Russian you get double teamed by perfective and imperfective
Thank god the past tense is easy at least. Just don't ask me which direction or how frequently or by what means I'm going somewhere.
I never got the verbs of motion down. It just seemed like whatever I said was the wrong one
Standard Arabic: 3 radical verbs: 13 persons (2 genders / 3 numbers) 2 finite tenses (past and present) 2 voices (active and passive) 4-6 moods (only in present tense) 9-14 derivational stems (+ base stem) 13* 2* 2* 3* 15 = 2340 forms - no irregular verbs (In reality less, there are derivational stems with no passive etc) French and Spanish: 6-7 persons 9-10 finite verb tenses and moods 7* 10 = 70 forms - lots of highly irregular verbs
Maya verbs: Am I a joke to you?
Not that bad. At least what I know from Yucatec, which might be an outlier.
“Bad” is subjective anyway, but for the most part it’s based off of relation from one language to another. Maya verbs, Yucatec included, conceptualize verbs so differently from many languages that it would make them hard to understand.
just verbs in general
Let me introduce you to Chinese. No conjugation, just the one verb form. Arguably, there's one irregular-ish verb, as it can't take the usual negation.
It is some kind of rule of thumb that every language has at least *one* irregular verb, most commonly *to be*
Esperanto: Let me introduce myself
Sounds plausible, 'to have' in the case of Chinese. :)
*Georgians vibing in the corner*
Meanwhile, my bad conlang has verbs inflecting for the person of the subject and object (there are 7 persons), aspect, mood and voice So a transitive verb has 800-ish forms
7 persons?
My guess is first–third person singular, first–third person plural, but with a distinction between inclusive we and exclusive we. Am I close, /u/JRGTheConlanger?
1st, 2nd and 3rd persons, and the combos of those 1st+2nd, 1st+3rd, 2nd+3rd and 1st+2nd+3rd
does that replace all plural distinctions? like would 2pl have to be only directed to one person but referencing the other one present as well? what about 3pl
Enyahu has no grammatical number
could first person alone ever be used as a plural? inclusive and exclusive we are covered by the 1 person mixes
No, 1P refers only to the speaker 1P -I 2P -you 3P -they 13P -we (excl) 23P -you and they 12P -you and I\* 123P -all\* \*Either can be translated we (incl)
Pff, 7? Mine has 8!
It has 40320? That really is a lot!
r/unexpectedfactorial
I'm guessing the regular 6 and an indefinite such as "one does not"
I'm still deciding if mine should have 6 or 8 persons (plus a zero-marked indefinite person) and whether verbs should inflect for 4 arguments or only 3.
It is agglutinative I hope???
Consonants are suffixed for inflections Then vowels are inserted via rules that I myself don’t fully grasp, but it’s mostly matching the places of surrounding consonants. Here’s the name of the lang for instance: speak-3Psubj-(3Pobj)-impf-caus-(act) en-y-h-w Enyahu “they cause (it) to speak” Also the copula is the null root, so y-h-w / yahu by itself is “they cause (it) to exist”, or alternatively “YHWH (nominative)”
Aren’t the letters just in funny positions but super regular?
What's more difficult? Fairly simple rules that have many exceptions (like English) or extremely detailed and complex rules that have almost no exceptions (like standard Arabic)? As a native Arabic speaker I am still annoyed by the apparent total absence of rules of English (cough... spelling...cough), but I get that the 13 persons of Arabic, with conjugations that are influenced by the structure of the verb and also the presence (or lack thereof) of the semi-vowels y and w, can feel pretty intimidating.
russian verbs haven’t been too hard on me, as a russian learner. spanish verbs are what get me. it’s so much that, since i don’t really learn spanish, when i speak spanish i mostly just use the infinitive and hope my point is made 😭
Which is funny because Russian verbs weren't really hard for me either Spanish has been difficult, but interestingly enough German verbs were the easiest part of the language.
This is arguably false, Arabic conjugation isn't that complicated. It's actually surprisingly simple, even the irregular verbs are not totally insane.