Breaking Down Basque Verbs

Basque verbs carry a lot more information than an English verb. An English verb generally just
gives you a meaning, occasionally it also tells you who is doing the action (like in run vs. runs,
am vs. is vs. are, etc.), but in general we rely on other words such as "you", "he", "we", etc. and
the order of the sentence to tell us who is doing what. Take, for example, the sentence:
"The dog see you"

While we recognize that the sentence is incorrect, we're unlikely to assume that the "​you​" in this
sentence is doing the seeing, that is, that the meaning is "​you see the dog​" instead of "​the dog
sees you"​. Even though "​see"​ is proper form for "​you"​ and not "​the dog​", we rely more on the
parts around the verb to tell us who is doing what and what is being done.

In Basque, this is different. The parts around the verb are less important and can often be left
out entirely. This is because a verb in Basque can tell you several things:
1. who is doing the action (subject)
2. who is receiving the action (direct object)
3. who it is being done or given to (indirect object)

An action can be anything from walking to eating to telling a story. Who is doing the action is
generally the word we put just in front of the verb in English, such as the "I" in "I am walking" or
"the dog" in "the dog sees you". In Basque, this is embedded into the verb. If there is only a
"doer" and no "receiver" of the action, we have what is called a NOR verb. This is the simplest
verb type in Basque as it only contains one piece of information: who or what is doing the
action.

NOR Verbs
These are verbs like "to go" or "to come" where you aren't doing the action to anyone. You
wouldn't normally say "I go you" or "He went the dog", just saying who went is all the information
we need. You may hear these called intransitive verbs. These verbs are known as NOR (the
Basque word for "who") verbs because the verb only tells us "who" (or what) is doing the action
and the subject goes in the NOR case.

Here are your main NOR synthetic (changing) verbs:

ibili (to walk)
nabil - I walk
dabil - he/she/it walks
gabiltza - we walk
zabiltza - you walk (one person)
zabiltzate - you all walk (multiple people
dabiltza - they walk
etorri (to come)
nator - I come
dator - he/she/it comes
gatoz - we come
zatoz - you come
zatozte - you all come
datoz - they come

joan (to go)

noa
doa
goaz
zoaz
zoazte
doaz

izan* (to be/ser)

naiz
da
gara
zara
zarete
dira

egon* (to be/estar)

nago
dago
gaude
zaude
zaudete
daude

* these verbs are slightly irregular, but you can still see some of the patterns below in them

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At first glance, it may seem like these forms are all random, but that's because the Basque verb
system doesn't work the same way most of us are used to. In English, French, German,
Spanish, etc. we're used to looking to the end of a verb to find who is doing the action, however
in Basque you have a main root which we can add things to the front or the end of to change the
meaning. The middle stays the same and we change the beginning and end to give it meaning.
Let's analyze a few of the patterns we can see. The most obvious is that the first letter tells us
"who" is doing the action. This gives us:
n- I
d- he/she/it/they
g- we
z- you/you all

So when we see a verb that starts with n-, we can assume that it is talking about "I". If it starts
with d-, then we can assume it is about "he, she, it".

The next thing we need to pay attention to is the root. If the verb starts with a vowel (aeiou), we
replace that with "a", otherwise we remove the letter entirely. We also remove the last
letter/sound. So in "ibili", we can get the root "-abil-", from "etorri" we get "-ator-" (we don't need
that extra 'r'), and from "joan" we get "-oa-". "Izan" and "egon" are a bit irregular, but you can
see some of the patterns in them as well.

There is one last thing we need to be able to understand these verbs completely, if you'll notice
the first letter only tells us if it's singular or plural for "I" and "we" (with n- and -g respectively).
For he/she/it/they and you/you all, we can't tell if it's singular or plural just from looking at the
first letter. To differentiate them, we add a plural marker to the end. This plural marker is -z or
-tza. After -l, we'll use -tza, otherwise we'll use -z. You might also notice that the form for "you"
also has this plural marker, this is likely because in the past this "zu" form was used to refore to
multiple people (similar to "vous" in French and "Sie" in German, though unlike French and
German Basque created a new form for the plural, closer to Spanish voseo). However, over
time this form was used to refer to a single person and the "zuek" form was created by adding
"-te" to the "zu" forms.

So how can we put this all together? Here are a few examples:
1. ibili
- The root is -abil-
- For singular forms (remembering that "you" is plural), we can simply add the proper letter:
nabil, dabil
- For plural forms, we add the letter and the plural marker -tza: gabiltza, zabiltza, zabiltzate,
dabiltza

2. etorri
- The root is -ator-
- For singular forms, add the letter corresponding to the person we want: nator, dator
- For plural forms, add the letter + plural marker -z, also rather than saying that -rz sound, we
just remove the -r: gatoz, zatoz, zatozte, datoz

3. joan
- The root is -oa-
- For singular forms: noa, doa
- For plural forms: goaz, zoaz, zoazte, doaz