Judeo-Spanish: Verb

Verb

The verbal endings differ only slightly from the modern Spanish.

Both the simple and the compound form of the conditional mood, refered as present and present perfect, are of present meaning, cf.:

yevaría = avía a yevar I would bring.

The passive forms, constructed with ser and the past participle, are rarely used.

It is to notify the opposition between singular and plural in the 3rd p. of the reflexive infinitive and gerund forms, cf.:

kere lavarse he want to wash himself vs. keren lavarsen they want to wash themselves.

The old Spanish pluperfect in -ra is peserved in the speech. The future tense is expressed usually by the periphrastic construction ir a + infinitive.

Under the influence of the Balkan languages the usage of the infinitive was substituted by the subjunctive, cf.:

kale azer => kale ke aga it must do;
ke azer? => ké ke aga? what to do?

The above examples have their counterparts in Rumanian.

For its part the subjunctive was substituted by the indicative in the subordinite clauses introduced by verbs of emotion, the comparative komu ke as if etc.

The dialects of Macedonia has a personal infinitive, as in Galician and Portuguese, cf.:

... ke no me eches en olvido de me mandares letras.

... in order not to forget to send me letters.

In Thessalonika and Bitola the gerund was preceded always by en, and the usual gerund form served as imperative in plural unless there were not clitical pronouns (la, le, lo). With the clitical pronouns there was used the plural form of the imperative, for both singular and plural, and there occured a metathesis -dl- => -ld-, cf.:

kantalda (=kantad-la) sing it;
traeldo (traed-lo) bring it;
dezilde (=dezid-le) say him.

The main periphrastic constructions are:

estar / ir + gerund (of progressibve meaning);
venir de + infinitive (recently completed action -- borrowed from French);
tornar i + personal infinitive (repeated action -- a calque from Hebrew), cf.:

Vos invitamos a tornar i escucharmos.

We invite you to listen to us again.

Negation

The negative pronouns and adverbs require the usage of the negative particle no regardless the place of the verb (double negation), cf.:

JSp. Ninguno no vino. = Sp. Nadie vino. Nobody came.

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