Talk:Armenian verbs

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The Armenian verbs are extremely awkward considering they sound like no other language I have ever come across. None the less, it is a beautifal language which has a sound of its own.

[edit] Disagreement over conditional

I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia. One thing I noticed was that in Eastern Armenian in practice, the conditional verb forms weren't used as described here. The non-past conditional form was really used as another future tense (more used than the future form described, in fact). Meanwhile, the past conditional form was used like a non-past conditional form (I would like).

Therefore, the verb

non-past conditional ksirem: (I will like)

past conditional ksirei: (I would like)

Meanwhile, the future tense described here really better relates to the English "I am going to..." so:

sirelu em (I am going to like)

sirelu ei (I was going to like)

The question then is, how do you say "I would have liked..." (a true past conditional). I asked several Armenians this, and they answered "Chka." ("There isn't any.")

What do other people think?

[edit] Radio Yerevan

The verbal morphology of Armenian is fairly simple in theory, but is complicated by the existence of two main dialects.

Found the leading sentence funny, as it resembles the structure of the Radio Yerevan jokes. :-) bogdan ʤjuʃkə | ^Talk 8 July 2005 19:17 (UTC)