lesson 76: past tense plural (2) and the 3 root consonants

lesson 76

past tense plural (2)

and the three root consonants

 

 

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OK more grammar today. Kadimah! We'll look at past tense plural of three very regular verbs. But before that we need to go back to the 3 root consonant structure I mentioned in an earlier post.

Hebrew verbs are generally constructed on the basis of three root consonants (and yes there are lots of exceptions). These consonants appear most clearly in the:

 

third person singular masculine past tense

i.e. he learned / walked / wrote etc.

and that's the form under which verbs are to be found in dictionnaries.

to learn: lilmod: the 3rd p.sg.masc.past tense is lamad. the 3 consonants: l m d
(which is probably the easiest example for this system since there are no tricky cononants)



 So now we'll lok at three regular verbs from the point of view of the three consonant pattern:

 kara'  קרא  k r '       'amar   אמר  ' m r        'achal  אכל   ' ch l

looking at the Hebrew spelling the three consonants are obvious in the English transcription it's a bit less obvious  since the English/Latin alphabet does not have a letter for א .
I'll use the '    to represent it.


 the structure of the past tense verb conjugation can be represented in this way

X     a    X     a     X    (the x here stands in for a consonant)
k     a     r      a     '             kara'       he read
'      a     m    a      r           'amar       he said
'      a    ch    a      l            'achal       he ate


 to this you just need to add the endings as discussed in the last post about the past tense

-ti                               first person singular masculine and feminine = I said / read / ate ...
-ta                              second person singular masculine                   = you said
-t                                second person singular feminine                    = you said
-                                 third person singular masculine                      = he said
-ah with a twist          third person singular feminine                        = she said
-nou                            first person plural masc. and fem.                   = we said
-tem                           second person plural masc.                             = you said
-ten                            second person plural fem.                               = you said
-ou with a twist          third person plural masc. fem.                        = they said


XaXaX-ti                 kara'ti                   'amarti          'achalti
XaXaX-ta                kara'ta                  'amarta          'achalta
XaXaX-t                  kara't                    'amart            'achalt
XaXaX-                   kara'                     'amar              'achal
XaXX- ah                kar'ah                   'amrah            'achlah
XaXaX-nou             kara'nou               'amarnou        'achalnou
XaXaX-tem             kara'tem               'amartem        'achaltem
XaXaX-ten              kara'ten                'amarten         'achalten
XaXX-ou                 kar'ou                  'amrou            'achlou


So, that's it for today  and if you feel a little overwhelmed and confused don't worry we'll repeat the past tense a lot over the next few lessons.