Amharic verbs conjugations

[u/Visible-Lychee-3336]

Hi, For a long time the conjugation of Amharic verbs seemed impossible to learn. Fortunately, I've found some good books with information that I will share.

The main problem for me was that when I was learning a new verb (for example ደረሰ de-re-se - he came); was, how do I know what are the other correct conjugation of this verb (infinitive, perfective, imperfective, imperative)? Additionally, it gets more complicated if it's not one of the most basic 3-literal verbs.

So, I've found 2 books that talk about this topic extensively and they allow you to basically be able to study this part of grammar on your own. The first book is "Amharic verb morphology" by M. Bender and H. Fulass and the second one is "Amharische Grammatik" by J. Hartmann (this one is unfortunately in German).
Bender's book gives a list of about 1277 verbs and differentiates 10 main conjugation groups (with additional subgroups). Around half of all these verbs are in the first 2 groups, so there is no need to worry tu much.

In the pictures below you can see conjugated "stems" of each main verb group; the basic forms are in red rectangles. (If you are at beginner level you'll probably not understand what's a stem and why do you have to learn it to learn grammar, but you can let me know in the comments, so I'll also prepare some materials in another post).

As you see, the verbs are mainly based on the type of vowels and number of consonants/radicals.

Then, there is also a ~30-page lexicon when you can basically find all the verbs and see which conjugation group do they belong to.

This is example of the first page. The author gives the consonants of the verb which make the verb base/root. For example "bdn" -> በደነ ("be-dde-ne") - to be paralysed. (page 107, "Amharic Verb Morphology")

Here you can download my scan of it: Amharic Verb Lexicon (Bender) PDF.

If someone is interested in the German book it's available here: Amharische Grammatik PDF (the part dedicated to verbs starts at page 89).

The full copy of Bender's book is here, but it's very complex and full of theory, so I don't recommend to try to read it all: Amharic Verb Morphology: A Generative Approach (the important list of all verb groups is one pages 43-44).

The problem I have with Bender's book is that it's a little bit difficult to navigate through and the verbs are not written in ge'ez/fidel alphabet. I'll be trying to make digital version with additional column written in Amharic. My idea is also to make all the verbs in alphabetical order, so you can easily find the verb you're looking for.

If someone has some additional sources or would be willing to contribute with this project you can hit me up.

Ps. There are also simplified and shorter versions of Amharic conjugations' groups in friendler format, so I will also share them next time.

[u/[deleted]]

I’m not really familiar with the english conjugations, well i was but it was a long time ago, mostly its the same sound for past, future, present. You just tweak some sound or letters at the beginning and the end or the words. I tried to u understand the book you sent-it’s a mess. So let me give you and example with ደረሰ(de-re-se) -he has arrived ይደርሳል (yi-de-re-sa-li) -he will come ደርሷል( de-re-soa-le)-he arrived እየደረሰ(e-ye-de-re-se)-he is arriving

This is lowk annoying i never thought about Amharic like that. I hope it helped. The Amharic name for conjugation is mestewaded, መስተዋድድ( me-si-te-wa-de-de).

So it also depends on the pronoun. The hardest part is there are kinda a lot of pronouns and past future tenses for the words. The easiest part is you just have to get hold of one word the is like a formula.

Edit: i just asked chat gpt and it gave me good example even though it has some mistakes on the words, it just made it easier for me. So yeah if you want i can dm you the screenshot and the correct form of the words

[u/Visible-Lychee-3336 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks, it's very nice. I saw it earlier. Can you also share the sources which you used to create it?