Remember that there are three types of verbs based on their last vowel in the dictionary form: a-verbs, e-verbs, and и-verbs, i.e. those ending in a, e, and и, respectively, in the form found in the dictionary. Remember also that based on their aspect, there are two types of verbs: imperfective and perfective. In forming the past tenses, three questions need to be kept in mind:
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- what is the aspect of the verb,
- whether the last vowel of the dictionary form changes (and if so, to what), and
- what the endings are.
The aorist (минато определено свршено време - МОС) is the second past tense you will learn about. It is made from perfective verbs. In this tutorial, you see examples of several small subgroups of perfective verbs that end in и and exceptions. For the majority of и-verbs, as you saw in the Aorist (и-verbs) 1 tutorial, the и does not change. For the various subgroups of verbs in this tutorial:
- и could change to ja (as in изброи ' count'>јас избројав, ти/тој/таа/тоа изброја, ние избројавме, вие избројавте, тие избројаа);
- и could change to a (not shown in the tutorial, but similar to the example above: забележи 'notice'>јас забележав, ти/тој/таа/тоа забележа, ние забележавме, вие забележавте, тие забележаа)
- и could change to e (as in оздрави 'get well'>јас оздравев, ти/тој/таа/тоа оздраве, ние оздравевме, вие оздравевте, тие оздравеа)
- the verb види 'see' is an exception (aorist forms are: јас видов, ти/тој/таа/тоа виде, ние видовме, вие видовте, тие видоа, note the changes of vowels to o and e).
Note that each verb will only fit into one of these subgroups, i.e. the speaker does not choose which vowel to change the и to. These subgroups have a small number of verbs in them, for example, in the first and last category there are only the verbs mentioned above. Note also that with verbs in the first and third category above, it is also acceptable to not change the vowel before adding the aorist endings below. This development is part of current naturally-occurring language change as speakers use their native language.
As you already know and saw in the examples above, once the vowel is determined, to make the aorist, the following endings are added: