Litish 101 is no longer updated, please refer to the High Litish page on the kingdom website!
Veni, Vidi, Vici?
In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tenseHere I/we may introduce to you simple tenses. And not just 'simple' as in they're easy, but they're kinda named that too.
Present Simple
You may already know this.
Lënnen eldib ('I eat')- this may be in the present simple tense.
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Past Simple
I ate - in English, ed often marks the simple past tense. In Litish, something similar. d! Thumbs up? Thumb?
I eat - Lënnen eldib
I ate - ?
Nope, not Lënnen eldibd. You could try saying that out though. When an unmarked (or marked, maybe) verb ends with a consonant, you could remove the consonant. If it ends with more than one consonant, don't get rid of both. Add an o before adding the d, unless the other consonant is an n. If it is, just add a d. If it's a double n, remove one n and add a d.
I ate - Lënnen eldid
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Future Simple
In English, we may construct this with other verbs- I will go, I am going to go- I am going to eat, I will eat. In Litish, r!
I eat - Lënnen eldib
I will/am going to eat ≈ Lënnen eldibr
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Remember pronoun conjugation? The personal suffixes come after the tense suffix.
[Example: It is going to/ will eat ≈ Italy eldibri, NOT *Italy eldibir]
The particle do comes before the verb, and may be an alternative to suffixes. It may help clear confusion if you're conjugating by pronoun.
Past Simple
I ate - Lënnen dod eldib
[add the d suffix behind 'do' instead]
Future Simple
I am going to/ will eat ≈ Lënnen dor eldib
[add the r suffix behind 'do' instead]
For Present Simple ('I eat'), don't use the do particle. This could imply Present Continuous, which might lack a suffix in Litish. No, dod and dor don't imply Past and Future Continuous. Those have longer suffixes. The pronoun conjugation can come on the particle do too, but maybe leave the verb to taking on personal suffixes.
One more lesson and you may be done with the first lesson group! Here, look at this:
Vas-vas!