lesson 3: verbs

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now that you’ve got nouns down, let’s move on to verbs! ablaut marks verb tense. fynotek marks 8 tenses; here are the basic 4:

present tense is unmarked/implied.
past tense is marked with i ablaut.
future tense is marked with o ablaut.
gnomic tense is marked with y ablaut.

(gnomic tense means tenseless/general tense; for example, “the earth is round.” and “she is short.” are both gnomic statements. they’re not just happening in the past, present, or future, they’re just general facts.)

in addition to tense, verbs are marked for the person of the subject.

first person subject (i/we) is unmarked/implied.
second person subject (you) is marked with -a.
third person subject (he/she/they/it) is marked with -o.

verbs can be given suffixes in the following order:

negation is marked with the suffix -ñy.
the subject must be shown with a suffix, as shown above.
modifiers can be suffixed onto the verb; more on this in lesson 5.

finally, much like the “a-” prefix for nouns, verbs can be marked with the prefix “i-.”

congratulations! you now know most of what there is to know about verbs! you’ll learn the more complex tenses in lesson 7.

homework (google doc)

vocab:

piu: food, to eat
ninpa: to give
skafas: to have
sefo: good, to like
omplan: bad, to dislike