Tag: conjugation

Äänestää and Other Finnish Verbs

Last Sunday there was president elections in Finland.

The Finnish verb for vote is äänestää. This verb wasn’t in the Verbix database, so it was added yesterday along with a number of other verbs. Although the verb wasn’t included in the Verbix database, the on-line conjugator conjugated the verb correctly. Just the warning was a bit annoying for this common verb.

Another verb that wasn’t there in the database until yesterday was ystävystyä ‘to become a friend’. This verb will probably remind about itself on 14.2. that is called ystävänpäivä ‘Valentine’s Day’ in Finland.

Links to Follow:

Swedish in Finland

Finland, areas with predominantly Swedish speaking population
Swedish speaking areas in Finland

Swedish language is a Germanic language that is spoken in Sweden and in Finland. In Finland, the Swedish language is the second official language. Swedish is spoken on coastal areas in Finland.

There are four main variants of the Swedish in Finland as shown on the map. The spoken variations differ quite a lot from each other, but as a written language they are all the same. The written language is the same in Finland and in Sweden.

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How to Use the Spanish Verb Conjugation Book?

There’s an “Easter Egg” in Verbix 9 for Windows.

An Easter Egg in software is a hidden feature that is not documented. In Verbix 9 the hidden feature creates a Spanish Verb Conjugation book and saves it as PDF. This article describes how to use the book. As a matter of fact, this book is used exactly in the same way as any verb conjugation book that you can buy in a bookstore!

1. First look up the verb from the verb index.

As in many verb conjugation books, the Spanish Verb Conjugation book created in Verbix for Windows 9.0 has an index of verbs.

Let’s find for example ‘ser’ (English ‘to be’).

 

2. Check the verb model that the verb refers to.

In the index the verb ‘ser’ is marked with number 1. This number refers to the verb conjugation table 1. Now that we browse the book to verb conjugation table 1, we find the verb ser conjugated in all tenses.

As in Verbix, irregular forms are displayed in red and regular forms are in black.

About the Spanish Verb Conjugation Book

The book has an index of 38,395 verbs.

The book comprises 231 pages.

Color coding clearly shows additional information of every verb form:

  • regular forms in black
  • irregular forms in red
  • forms that have changes in spelling due to orthographic rules are in blue
  • archaic forms are in purple
  • non-used (hypothetical) forms are in grey

The book is free!

 

Verb tables in PDF

One of the new features of the upcoming Verbix 9 is the possibility to create PDF documents of the verb conjugation tables.

This makes it possible to put your favorite verbs on your iPhone or any other gadget that supports PDF.

Or simply print out the verb table.

The PDF is supported first for Spanish verbs. Please vote for getting PDF support for other languages, too.

  • The verb cocer ‘to cook’ conjugated in all tenses: Cocer verb.

Verbix 9 Beta Released

Today Verbix 8 Beta was relased.

It is the first public beta version of the upcoming Verbix 9.

Among new features are:

New user interface that clearly divides the software into language selection view and verb conjugation view.

The renewed verb conjugation view now contains the one-stop place for entering a verb:

  • Enter the verb infinitive in active language nad Verbix conjugates it;
  • Enter any conjugated form of the verb and Verbix returns the infinitive;
  • Enter the verb in any language and Verbix translates it to active language.

Verbix 9 Beta is available for download here.

Korean or Arabic

The Korean and Arabic languages were added about in the same time on the Verbix website. Both languages support conjugating verbs since a few months back.

It has been interesting to follow how many verbs have been conjugated since then. Today (9/21/2011) Arabic verbs have been conjugated 59,241 times and Korean verbs 58,226 times.

In the all-time ranking these languages now have the 44th and 45th place in the number of verbs having been conjugated. The most conjugated language is Spanish with verbs having been conjugated 76,986,823 times!

Links to go:

 

Place Those Accents Correctly

Many Western European languages use the same alphabet as English, with one significant difference. There can be diacritics (or accents) above certain characters.

For a student of a foreign language, it’s important to place those accents correctly. Sometimes these tiny small markers can be forgotten, for example when conjugating a verb. If the accents are forgotten, the verb conjugation may even fail.

To check that the accents are placed correctly, have a look at the reverse conjugator. There you can write the infinitive without accents and the reverse conjugator tells, whether accents should be added or not.

Check for instance the Spanish verb ‘reir’. (Note! I misspelled it on purpose)

More info:

Reverse Verb Conjugation

Verb conjugation is the process of forming all the verbal forms from the dictionary lookup word. (generally infinitive). Reverse conjugation means getting the infinitive from any conjugated verb form.

In linguistics revers conjugation would rather be named morphological analysis. In morphological analysis the different parts of  word are analyzed: the stem and the modifiers. The modifiers are those parts of a verb that denote mood, tense, number, person, etc.

In Verbix the reverse conjugation (or morphological analysis) is made simple. The user simply enters any verb form, and Verbix tells if it’s a verb or not. If it’s a verb, then Verbix returns the infinitives that can be conjugated.

More info:

Don’t Panic!

The English language has a limited number of irregular verbs. Once you learn them, it’s pretty straight-forward to conjugate all English verbs.

There are, however, a number of verbs that are regular but undergo orthographical changes. Orthographical changes are there to ensure that the pronunciation is preserved in the different forms of a verb.

’To panic’ is one of these verbs. An automated verb conjugator might conjugate the verb in past ’paniced’, but that’s wrong. The correct past is ’panicked’, so there is a ’k’ attached to the stem to preserve the pronunciation.

The dictionary of Verbix knows a half dozen of verbs that are conjugated like panic. And the past forms are marked in blue to denote the orthographic change.

In addition the built-in rules of Verbix also know orthographic rules. So, don’t panic! Verbix knows how to conjugate verbs ending in ’c’.

Links to go:

Verb Conjugation

Verb conjugation is the central part of the sentence in most languages.

Verb conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection. Principal parts is sometimes the infinitive like “cantar” in Spanish, but it can also be verb theme like “skriva – skriver – skrev -skrivit” in Swedish.

In Spanish it’s enough to know the infinitive of a verb to get all the conjugated forms; in the case of regular verbs all the conjugated forms are formed with the same set of endings. Unfortunately there is a big amount of irregular verbs that don’t follow the regular verb conjugation patters.

As shown in the example above, in Swedish verb conjugation there’s a verb theme consisting of four verb forms. All Swedish verb forms are formed by applying the same set of endings to the theme. The theme itself must be memorized, because it contains information about irregularities, if any.

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