Verbal Stems

Tibetan, as most languages, has different verbs based on the stems, such as present, past, future and imperative. There are no strict rules, you need to learn the verb forms for each case.


For example, the verb to do is in present byed, past byas, future bya and imperative byos.


Then again, sometimes we are lucky when learning a verb, the verb to understand is go in both present, past, future and imperative.

There are all kinds of variations, sometimes there are only two forms of stems, sometimes all four are different, only three different verbs are for the four stems, and so on.

The best is -- alas -- to learn the verbs. There's also the notion of voluntary and non-voluntary verbs that will talk about next.