Giving orders or instructions is one of the easiest ways to express ourselves.
To make direct commands, requests, orders, instructions, or supplications in Quechua simply use the endings -y, -ychis, -chun, -chunku and -sun.
For example: ¡hamuy! means ¡come!
Wait a minute, didn’t we agree that “hamuy” was an infinitive? 🤨 You’re right. What happens is that the ending “-y” has several functions, including the infinitive and the imperative.😌
The verb Kay is probably the most important and most used verb of Quechua, as we saw in lesson 3, this verb can have several meanings (to be, to have) how to know what it means? It all depends on the context of the sentence and there are also fixed structures that will help you.
Most commonly, the verb ‘kay‘ means ‘to be‘.
It can be used for:
It can not be used for:
In English, the most common formation of plural nouns is by adding an –s suffix to the singular noun, in Quechua you must add the suffix -kuna.
We saw a little of this with the pronouns qankuna (you [guys]) and paykuna (they), which are formed by adding -kuna to qan (you) and pay (he/she).
Let’s look at some examples and increase our vocabulary:
The future tense in Quechua is also very easy, but unlike the past tense where the suffix -ra/-rqa was used for every grammatical person, to conjugate the future tense in Quechua you have to learn new verb endings. All verbs are regular, that does not change.
Look at the following table where the endings of the present simple and future simple are compared:
This is the reason why we did not do the past simple before, because once we know the conjugation in the present continuous (-sha), so we can achieve 2 objectives with a single effort: The past simple and the past continuous.
In English the present perfect is formed by adding the verb ‘to have’, i.e. “I have brought”, in Quechua there is no such tense.
Perhaps, in learning the simple present conjugation of Quechua you were wondering about the past or future tense, do not worry, we talk about it in future lessons, but first let’s talk about the present continuous.
We use the suffix -sha to express the present continuous in Quechua, it is added between the verb root and the verb ending, very easy, right? Look at this formula:
The good news is that virtually all Quechua verbs are conjugated in the same way, all are regular verbs (Although there is an exception, but it does not vary much😅)
To conjugate verbs in Quechua, the suffix -y of the infinitive verb must be removed and then we add to the root (raiz verbal) the ending indicating the grammatical person and tense (in this case present simple).
To learn a language and be able to have a non-complex conversation, you don’t need much vocabulary, on average with about 800 essential words it is more than enough to start.
Little by little I will give you batches of new words so that you can learn them and enrich your vocabulary. The key is in practice, do your best to use these new words, even in your thoughts.