Doctor John <joh### [at] homecom> wrote:
> Warp, what's the case in Finnish?

  Hmm, verb inflections being "irregular" is not such a prominent
characteristic in Finnish that it is in other languages, but I suppose
the verb for "to be" (which happens to be the same as for "to have")
has its irregularities.

  For example, the inflections for the present tense of "olla" (to be,
to have) and a similar verb "kuolla" (to die) are:

kuolen      olen
kuolet      olet
kuolee      on
kuolemme    olemme
kuolette    olette
kuolevat    ovat

  The irregularity appears only in the third person of the present tense.
There's no irregularity eg. in the past tense:

kuolin      olin
kuolit      olit
kuoli       oli
kuolimme    olimme
kuolitte    olitte
kuolivat    olivat

  The only other tense which I can think of with irregularities is the
potential tense (a slightly more rarely used tense, but not unusual,
especially with the verb "olla"; a bit rarer with other verbs):

kuollen     lienen
kuollet     lienet
kuollee     lienee
kuollemme   lienemme
kuollette   lienette
kuollevat   lienev?t

  (The potential tense can be translated into English eg. as "he might die",
and "he might be", but as said, this tense is slightly archaic and its usage
is less common than a more explicit expression using "ehk?" ("maybe") and
the present tense (which also acts as future tense). The potential tense of
the verb "olla" is still relatively commonly used, though.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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