Tunisian technically has perfect/imperfect. That is whether someone is done or still doing something. In their simplest form (no auxiliaries), they translate to English's past/present. See Compound tenses for more.

We'll be denoting them that way throughout this paper.

First of all, personal pronouns:

For simplicity, we're going to omit You (sg. fm.) and use the gender neutral form Enti

Tunisian verbs are grouped into 7 verb groups: CCVV, CCVC, CVCC, CVVC, V1, V2, V3

Notes:

• The infinitive form and the past tense form conjugated with the 3rd person singular masculine (He) of the same verb are the same.

• The imperative form and the present tense form conjugated with the 2nd person singular/plural (You/Yall) MINUS its "t-" prefix of the same verb are the same (exceptions: jee, ꝁđee and klee)

• A rule of thumb: Roughly, compared to the infinitive, present conjugation is prefixed and past conjugation is suffixed, ie: present = prefix + infinitive (+suffix) and past = infinitive + suffix

• In Present tense, knowing conjugations for I,You and He is enough, because:

• She ≡ You

• We = I + "o"

• Yall =You + "o"

• They = He + "o"

• In Past tense: I ≡You

Tunisian verbs are always 4-and-up lettered except for only two verbs:

By extrapolating 'jee' too 'jeeġ', it maps on CVVC pattern with removing final and intervocalic 'ġ' and changing 'eġ' to 'ii' due to diphthong collapse.

Likewise, extrapolating 'raa' to 'rġaa' makes for a neat explanation to consider it CCVV. Not to mention explaining Sfaxian conjugation of the same verb and the Arabic etymon's form itself (فَعَى).

Now 4-letter verbs:

CCVV group

Infinitive = CCVV

The ablaut entry is an instrinsic property of the verb itself. In simpler terms, you need to memorize each verb and its corresponding ablaut:

Examples:

The exceptions:

Etymology: merger of Arabic forms فَعَى, فَعَا, فَعِيَ, فَعَأَ, أَفْعَى, and أَعَلَ as in رَحَى, زَهَا, طَرِيَ, رَزَأَ, أَعْطَى and أَخَذَ

CCVC group

Infinitive = CCVC

Again ablaut depends on your verb:

Examples:

The combination "ew" or "ow" changes to "ou":

Etymology: Arabic strong form فَعَلَ as in وَرَثَ

CVCC group

Infinitive = CVCC

CVCC have the two last consonants the same. Ideally: C₁aC₂C₂

For Ablaut:

Some examples:

Etymology: merger of Arabic forms فَعَّ as in مَدَّ

CVVC group

Infinitive = CVVC

(present ablaut, past ablaut) come in pairs, either (ou, o) or (i, e). Except for đaag and ꝁaaf which got (i,o) and (aa,o) respectively.

Example:

Exception:

Etymology: Arabic form فَالَ as in ذَابَ

Now over with the 4-lettered groups. Any group with >4 letters has no ablaut characterization:

V-1

Infinitive = #V

Basically any verb ending in a vowel, say -V, usually -e or -a. The rest of the verb will be denoted as "#"

The {e*} defines an epenthetic -e- infix introduced only and only if the next consecutive letters (ie: the first of the infinitive verb) are two or more consonant letters.

Etymology: the default group for adapted loanwords repurposed for verbs and merger of Arabic forms فَعَّى as in غَنَّى and , by surface analysis: causative of CCVV

V-2

Infinitive = #VC

Verbs ending in a -VC structure, essentially those whose second to last letter is a vowel, usually -e or -a.

Again with the epenthetic -e-, only inserted if the first consecutive letters of the infinitive form are 2 or more consonants (the limit is though 3)

Examples:

Etymology: merger of Arabic strong forms فَعَّلَ and أَفْعَلَ as in فَسَّرَ and أَوْقَفَ, by surface analysis: causative of CVVC, CVCC and CCVC

V-3

Infinitive = #VVC

Whatever ending in a -VVC structure (and would usually start with CC-)

Examples:

Etymology: merger of Arabic forms اِفْعَالَّ, اِفْتَالَ, اِسْتَفَالَ and اِفْعَلَّ as in اِعْوَاجَّ, اِصْطَادَ, اِسْتَفَادَ and اِحْمَرَّ. This group corresponds to causative Colors and defects

Passive verbs (t{e*}#): For past tense you conjugate # according to its group and then reinsert t{e*}. For present tense you add corresponding prefixes (and suffixes) respecting the Consonant-stacking principle

To express the passive otherwise, you can do "jee + past participle"

Demantative follows he same steps as the passive with analogizing t{e*} to st{a*}. One exception is that the demandative of CCVV is staCCV not staCCVV.

Only 4-lettered verbs have a causative which default to either V1 (CCVV) or V2 (CVVC, CVCC, CCVC).

For more on these categories, view Causative and passive verbs

Congrats, now you know how to conjugate verbs in Tunisian