Conjugate Tamil verbs in various forms for different subjects, or generate quiz questions to practice conjugations.

There are two ways to request conjugations of verbs. One way is to enter interactive mode by simply running tamil-verbs with no arguments. A prompt will open where you can request different conjugations. Another way is to request a conjugation from the command line through tamil-verbs conjugate. Both Tamil verbs and English definitions can be used to find a verb. For a list of all possible conjugations, see tamil-verbs conjugate --help.

> vaa past avan
வந்தான் (vandhaan)

> paar future
பார்ப்பேன் (paarppEn)

> sollu
சொன்னேன் (sonnEn)
சொல்கிறேன் (solgiREn)
சொல்வேன் (solvEn)
சொல்லி (solli)
சொல்ல (solla)

> go negative respectful command
செல் (sel):
  செல்லாதீர்கள் (sellaadheergaL)
போ (pO) - go, leave:
  போகாதீர்கள் (pOgaadheergaL)

> sel past relative avan
சென்றவன் (sendRavan)

> become adhu
ஆனது (aanadhu), ஆயிற்று (aayitRu)
ஆகிறது (aagiRadhu)
ஆகும் (aagum), ஆம் (aam)

> koNDuvaa guess conditional
கொண்டுவந்தால் (koNDuvandhaal)

There is also a command to generate quiz questions for conjugations of verbs. The basic command is tamil-verbs learn, but there are many flags that can be used to configure the generation of questions. See tamil-verbs learn --help for more information.

$ tamil-verbs learn --latin 'af/p/a'

$ tamil-verbs learn --count 100 --output 'quiz.txt'

$ grep ^3 verbs.txt | tamil-verbs learn --list '-' --count 15

There is a built-in verb list with some very basic verbs, but if you want to use your own verb list, you can load a custom list of verbs by passing a path to the file as a command-line argument with the option --list, by setting the TAMIL_VERB_LIST environment variable, or by using :load <file> in interactive mode (see :help for a list of all commands). This repository also contains an extended verb list called verbs.txt with some more advanced verbs.

The basic format of a verb entry is:

CLASS [PREFIX] VERB. DEFINITION, ...

• CLASS is one of 1W, 1S, 2W, 2S, or 3
• PREFIX is an optional prefix to add before the conjugated verb (e.g. for compound verbs)
• VERB is the verb in either Latin or Tamil letters
• DEFINITION is an English definition for the verb (there may be multiple)

Definitions can also end with a note in parentheses that will be displayed whenever that specific definition is used. This can help clarify ambiguous definitions such as break (transitive) and break (intransitive). Also, if a particular definition can only be used with inanimate objects, then an asterisk can be placed at the end to indicate it. This helps avoid conjugations such as "I happened" or "I was completed" which would be meaningless. For instance, naDa would be defined as walk, happen* to indicate that the seconnd definition can only be used with adhu. In order to apply a note or asterisk to a whole verb instead of just definitions, see note and inanim below.

There are also some special flags for irregular verbs which can be added after all definitions. These are separated by periods (.) like the other sections.

• note sets a note to be displayed whenever the verb is looked up by any definition
• defect makes the verb "defective" in that it will default to only conjugating for adhu in the future unless another subject or tense is explicitly requested (e.g. for pOdhu since the only common form is pOdhum)
• inanim makes the verb default to conjugating for adhu instead of naan when no subject is explicitly given (e.g. for teri and puri)
• adv V makes V be the adverb form of the verb (e.g. vandhu for vaa)
• stem S makes S be the stem for present and future tense of the verb (e.g. varu for vaa)
• adhu A makes A be the future tense for adhu and avai
• inf I makes I be the infinitive form of the verb
• resp R makes R be the respectful command for the verb (e.g. vaarungaL for vaa)

Any Tamil parts of the verb definition can be given in either Latin or Tamil letters. In general, Latin letters are preferred since they use less storage space in vocab lists, and since they are better supported by command-line interfaces. In order to confirm that verbs are valid Tamil, some additional checking is done if they are given in Latin letters to make sure that all sequences of consonants are valid by Tamil grammar rules. If you need to create a verb with an invalid sequence of consonants, then you should use Tamil letters directly in the verb entry.

Putting it all together, the entry for the compound irregular verb கொண்டுவா (koNDuvaa) looks like:

2W koNDu vaa. bring. adv vandhu. stem varu. resp vaarungaL

The verb classification this program uses has 5 classes. Each of these classes differ in many ways, but the differences are easiest to see for the past tense and the future tense. There are also a few special cases in each class depending on the ending of the verb root.

This program uses a custom style of transliteration. Capital letters are treated differently than lowercase letters to allow for more distinctions than are present in English. There are sometimes multiple ways to write the same letter to allow for more natural spellings. Most of these are fairly obvious, but due to the limited number of symbols, some concessions had to be made. I tried to make the strange spellings limited to uncommon words.

Short vowels can be written very simply:

But there are multiple ways to write long vowels:

There are lots of ways to write hard consonants due to their differences in pronunciation depending on position in the word. Each one can also optionally be followed by h (kh, ch, th, bh, etc).

*only between vowels or after medium consonants other than zh

**can be written as tR or tr when doubled instead of RR

Soft consonants have some unique ways of writing each letter:

*must be written as nh when not the first letter in a word

But there are also some combined forms for the common case of the soft consonant being followed by its corresponding hard consonant:

Medium consonants are the simplest consonants:

The aaydham (ஃ) is written as K giving eKgu for எஃகு. Non-Tamil sounds that aren't common in verbs can also be used, but these require uppercase letters: