Optative, Imperative & Future
Three more ways to bend a verb, each far more regular than Lesson 12's aorist: commands, wishes, and the future. Each simply inserts its own marker between the stem and Lesson 11's familiar personal endings.
The Imperative: Commands
Built on the present stem, with its own set of endings — the second-person singular is simply the bare stem itself (or the stem plus -hi), the most direct way to give an order in the language.
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | passāmilet me see | passāmalet us see |
| 2nd | passa, passāhisee! | passathasee! (to many) |
| 3rd | passatulet him/her see | passantulet them see |
The most famous imperative in the entire Canon is two words long: "Ehi bhikkhu" — "Come, monk!" — the formula by which the Buddha himself ordained his earliest disciples, simply by speaking it. Ehi is the 2nd singular imperative of eti, "to come/go" (an irregular verb whose imperative happens to be one of the most memorable words in the language). Some early ordination accounts continue with "cara brahmacariyaṃ" — "practice/wander the holy life" — where cara is the 2nd singular imperative of carati, "to walk, practice," following exactly the regular pattern in the table above.
The Optative: Wishes and Possibilities
Marked by inserting -eyya- before the ending — the single most recognizable marker in this lesson. It covers English "would," "should," "may," and polite requests.
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | passeyyaṃI would/should see | passeyyāmawe would see |
| 2nd | passeyyāsiyou would see | passeyyāthayou would see |
| 3rd | passeyyahe/she would see | passeyyuṃthey would see |
The Future
Marked by inserting -ssa- before the ending, then conjugating exactly like the present tense in Lesson 11 — the most mechanically regular of everything in this lesson.
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | passissāmiI will see | passissāmawe will see |
| 2nd | passissasiyou will see | passissathayou will see |
| 3rd | passissatihe/she will see | passissantithey will see |
Practice: Naming the Mood/Tense
- gaccha! — (bare command)
- gaccheyyāma
- gamissanti
- gacchatu
Check your answers
1. Imperative, 2nd singular — "Go!"
2. Optative, 1st plural — "we should/would go."
3. Future, 3rd plural — "they will go."
4. Imperative, 3rd singular — "let him go."
Continuing From Here
Lesson 14 covers participles and the absolutive (-tvā) — the forms behind stock narrative phrases like disvā, "having seen," and behind vuttaṃ, "it was said," a word you've already silently read in the Sīlaniddesa translation's own citation method.