Learn Assyrian › Grammar

4.14 The irregular verbs you can't avoid

4 · Verbs — how the system works · a plain-language guide to Assyrian (Sureth) grammar

Khan singles out ten verbs whose inflections come from two or three different roots — the technical word is suppletion, the same thing English does in "go / went." They are irregular because they are used constantly, and they are worth learning as whole words rather than as patterns.

Nine of them are here in full. Read down the "past" column first: that is where the surprise almost always is.

What to notice:

• "To go" and "to say" change lexical verb halfway through. azel has no past of its own — the past is kheshle, from a different root. tane has two pasts, tunile and merre, and merre is the one you meet in stories: merre raba spay "he said, 'very well'."
• "To give" hides an h. The present is yavvel and the imperative is hal! — the word you will actually say most often. Its object form is halle! "give it to him!", halle kati! "give it to me!" (Commands).
• "To know" is yatte in the present and d- in the past. dilukh? "you know? / you get it?" is one of the commonest things anyone says to you.
• ave is the verb "to be" and it is not the copula — it is what you use for "become," for wishes ("let it be"), and to build the irrealis and double-progressive forms in The participles. Its "she" form oya is the a + v → o rule from Weak verbs.
• ames "to be able" is listed under an a-, but you say it mase. Both are Khan's; the useful ones are masen "I can" and msili "I could."

(Khan's tenth is *madde "to inform," the causative of yatte. It behaves like the other Pattern III verbs whose root ends weak — machme, makhze, manshe in the tables above.)*

The irregulars in use

---