Language/Amharic/Grammar/Conditional-Mood

Amharic Grammar - Conditional Mood

Hi Amharic learners! 😊
In today's lesson, we will be discussing the conditional mood in Amharic. The conditional mood is used to express a hypothetical situation or an event that could happen in the future. It is also used to express wishes and requests.

After mastering this lesson, these related pages might interest you: “to be” and “to have”, Direct and Indirect Object Affixes, Give your Opinion & Common Amharic Idioms.

Overview

The conditional mood in Amharic is formed by adding the suffix -ንም (-nem) to the verb stem. This suffix is added to the verb stem regardless of the tense or person. For example, the verb አመሰግናለን (amesegenalen) means "I will read". To form the conditional mood, the suffix -ንም (-nem) is added to the verb stem አመሰግ (ameseg) to give አመሰግንም (amesegenem).

Examples

• አመሰግናለን (amesegenalen) - I will read
• አመሰግንም (amesegenem) - I would read
• አመሰግናለን። (amesegenalen.) - I will read.
• አመሰግንም። (amesegenem.) - I would read.

Usage

The conditional mood is used to express a hypothetical situation or an event that could happen in the future. It is also used to express wishes and requests.

Hypothetical Situations

The conditional mood is used to express hypothetical situations. For example:

• እኔ አመሰግንም (enem amesegenem) - I would read
• እኔ አመስግኑንም (enem amesegunenem) - I would write

In these examples, the speaker is expressing a hypothetical situation. They are not actually reading or writing, but they are expressing what they would do if they were to do those things.

Wishes and Requests

The conditional mood is also used to express wishes and requests. For example:

• እኔ አመሰግንም (enem amesegenem) - I wish I could read
• እኔ አመስግኑንም (enem amesegunenem) - I wish I could write

In these examples, the speaker is expressing a wish or a request. They are not actually reading or writing, but they are expressing what they would like to do.

Conclusion

In this lesson, we discussed the conditional mood in Amharic. We saw how it is used to express hypothetical situations and wishes and requests. We also saw some examples of how the conditional mood is formed.

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Feel free to edit this wiki page if you think it can be improved. 😎

Other Lessons

• Simple Past Tense Forms of Other Verbs (Negative)
• The Present Future Tense
• Definite Direct Objects in the Simple Past
• Time Adverbs
• Negative Imperatives
• “to be” and “to have”
• Simple Gerundive
• The Past Perfect Tense
• Conjugation of mäwdäd (to like) present tense
• Future Tense

Sources

• CONDITIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN AMHARIC