Sanskrit passive tense

[icarus]

Buried and confused: nowhere does it tell us how to form the past imperfect passive tense on the very irregular "to make." Of course, like all irregular verbs, it's used all the time.

*guesses wildly*

Hmm. What I just wrote, my unique version of "was made" looks very illegal.

How the hell am I going to do all this? I'm taking second quarter Sanskrit with a less structured teacher than last quarter (he's not bad, just not the crack-the-whip, step-by-step type) alongside two graduate courses.

Thank god for snow. It's beautiful outside with a crystal white dusting like icing everywhere. And a pink sky over silver blue mountains. wildernessguru's home, happy to not be kicking around work with nothing to do in this cold. "The cold's not bad when you're working, but when there's nothing to do...."

He's cuddled under the blankets, oblivious to Monte kitty bouncing after his fuzzy ball.

Back to Sanskritsanskritsanskrit... only eight more to do. Let's look at it that way.


ETA: Kitty's sproing-sproing-Pounce woke WG up. "Is that Monte?" Now the mountains are pink. Those roads look icy, don't they?

Comments

[blackletter]

This is just a wild theory...but could the passive be a different verb? (I know it is in Latin. "Facio" for the active and "fieri" for the passive. So if a student tries to look up the passive of "facio", they won't get very far. Damn irregular verbs...)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Good theory, but no, it's the same verb. We're shown how to do the passive present tense:

Step one - add ya
Step two - add the passive ending

So, to make is kri, which in active third person present is karoti. The passive ending for the third person is "te."

Step one - kri-ya

Gotta love those exceptions. Here the vocalic "r" is turned into an "i," to make kri. The spelling difference between this kri and the root kri doesn't come across in English romanization, naturally.

The present becomes karo because all the present verbs have "ganas" in ten fantastic flavors. This is an 8th "gana" verb, which gets an "u" added before you take on the endings. In a fun uniquely Sanskrit-y twist, the Sandhi changes the "u" to an "o" -- voila, kri becomes karoti.

By comparison the passive is simple. No ganas, hallelujah, you just --

Step two - kri-ya-te

-- take on the ending after the ya.

Here's the tricky part. To make a past tense (called imperfect in Sanskrit, but not the same as imperfect in the English sense, Sanskrit doesn't have that refinement of tenses) you do this:

Step one - add "ah" to the beginning
Step two - append the past tense ending

Oh. Duh. I just answered my own bloody question. I need to add the passive past tense endings, not double up the endings like I'm doing.

Thank you. You have no idea how helpful you are in making me think this through.

Icarus