In this lesson, we are going to learn about the past form/tense. As mentioned before,
verbs in Egyptian language have three forms: Present, Past and Imperative.
Now we will focus on the past form/tense. Like present form, the verb changes according to the subject. The pattern most verbs follow in the past tense is demonstrated in the following example (notice the letters written in red):
| SHereb SHereb (Drank) | |
| anaa SHereb--t | anaa SHerebt (I drank) |
| enta SHereb--t | enta SHerebt (You drank(m.)) |
| ente SHereb--tee | entee SHerebtee (You drank(f.)) |
| entom SHereb--too | entoo SHerebto (You drank(pl.)) |
| howwa SHereb | howwa SHereb (He drank) |
| heyya SHereb--at | heyya SHerebat (She drank) |
| homma SHereb--oo | homma SHereboo (They drank) |
| eHnaa SHereb--naa | eHnaa SHerebnaa (We drank) |
There are verbs differing a little from that pattern, but we will focus now
on the regular verbs. These irregular verbs will be studied later.
The following verbs follow the same pattern shown above :
| akal | akal | Ate |
| 3amal | 'amal | Did |
| weqef | we'ef | Stood/Stopped |
| qa3ad | 'a'ad | Sat |
| etkallem | etakallem | Talked/Spoke |
| seket | seket | Stopped talking |
| daras | daras | Studied |
There is an important thing to mention here, when the subject is a personal pronoun (I, You, ... etc), it can be omitted because it can be known implicitly from the verb itself ( e.g. in a phrase like "zahabtY ela almadrassah ?", it can be deduced that the phrase is directed to a female from the verb "zahabtY" ). Omitting the subject is valid either in present or in past tense, but in past tense particularly.
Examples of using verbs in the present tense (note that the subject is
omitted in these examples):
|
1-SHerebt alqahwat>
SHerebt el-'ahwah ( I drank coffee) |
|
2-darastee fee algaame3at>
darastee fee al-gaame'ah You studied in the university (f.) |
|
3-weqeftoo fee aalSHaare3
we'eftoo fee el-shaarea You stood in the street (pl.) |
|
4-qa3adet 3alE aalkorsee
'a'adet aala el-korsee She sat on the chair |
|
5-akalnaa aaltofaaH
akalnaa al-tofaaH We ate apple |
That was it with the past form for this lesson, now it is exercise time ;).
-tu or -tum?