Lithuanian Basics: Lesson 28

We have talked about the future. To travel with the he form to the future, you simply change ti to si. Let’s learn how to deal with the past now!

To make the he form for past, you change ti to o!

Let’s try this. Remember our old friend to live.

?Alive|Gyvas

?He lives.|Jis gyvena.

Now, apply the General A to get to the infinitive:

?To live|Gyventi

And go to the past by changing ti to o now:

?He lived.|Jis gyveno.

Look, we are in the past already! Moreover, do you notice something? Gyvenoo ends with o, and, guess what, we already know how to deal with o words! So we know how to deal with the past automatically. We’ll do that in a moment.

But first, let’s make sure we remember well how to deal with these o verbs! If you remember, o changes to a before adding the endings for “aš” and “tu”. See?

?He reads.|Jis skaito.

?I read it.|Aš tai skaitau.

?You (informal) don’t read it.|Tu to neskaitai.

Alright, so, the same happens to the past. Let’s get back to gyveno. Say:

?I lived there.|Aš ten gyvenau.

?You (informal) didn’t live here.|Tu čia negyvenai.

Of course, the we and formal you forms work the same in the past as they do normally (that is, by adding me or te). For example, let’s try we:

?We lived here.|Mes čia gyvenome.

This ti to o is very simple and it works for a lot of words. As we have a chance, let’s learn another important Lithuanian word.

The Lithuanian for he works is jis dirba.

Could you say:

?To work|Dirbti

?They worked here.|Jie čia dirbo.

For the next sentence, you will be saying I here lived and worked. Try it:

?I lived and worked here.|Aš čia gyvenau ir dirbau.

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