A standard tabla de verbos for eman in the present tense looks like a Sudoku puzzle. One axis lists the subject (NORK), another axis lists the indirect object (NORI), and the direct object (NOR) is embedded inside.
Change just one variable—turn "to him" into "to us"—and diot becomes diegu . The entire stem warps. Here is the secret that demystifies the tables: Basque hates lexical verbs. In English, we say "I eat the apple." In Basque, you rarely conjugate "eat." Instead, you conjugate the auxiliary verb (the equivalent of "have" or "be") and leave the main verb as a participle. tablas de verbos en euskera
At first glance, these tables look like a printer’s error. Instead of six neat rows (I, you, he/she, we, you-plural, they), Basque tables sprawl horizontally and vertically, creating a dizzying matrix of possibilities. Welcome to the most sophisticated—and notoriously difficult—verb system in Europe. To understand why the tables are so vast, you have to forget everything you know about subjects and objects. In English, the verb "see" changes based on who is looking: I see, he sees . In Basque, the verb changes based on who is looking , who is being looked at , and—here is the kicker— who is the listener . A standard tabla de verbos for eman in
Basque is an . In plain English, that means the verb treats the subject of a transitive verb (the "doer") differently than the subject of an intransitive verb (the "experiencer"). The entire stem warps