Konjugationer

Konjugationer are the inflected forms of verbs used to express grammatical categories such as person, number, tense, mood, aspect, and voice. Through conjugation, verbs indicate who performs an action, when it occurs, and how it relates to other events. The extent of konjugation varies by language, ranging from highly inflected systems to more analytic ones that rely on word order and auxiliary verbs.

Many languages group verb forms into regular patterns or conjugation classes. Regular verbs obey predictable endings, while irregular verbs exhibit stem changes, vowel alternations, or suppletive forms. Some languages use periphrastic constructions, combining auxiliary verbs with non-conjugated verb forms, while others encode tense, aspect, and mood directly in the verb itself.

Conjugation is a core topic in grammar instruction. Learners study conjugation tables and paradigms to achieve subject–verb agreement and to express nuanced temporal and modal meanings. The system's complexity varies across languages and may include additional distinctions such as transitivity, voice (active/passive), and, in some languages, evidentiality.

Examples illustrate diversity. English offers be: I am, you are, he is; I was, you were, he was. Spanish presents hablar: hablo, hablas, habla in the present, and hablé, hablaste, habló in the past. These patterns reflect how languages construct verbal meaning through conjugation.