This article describes the conjugation and use of verbs in Slovene. Further information about the grammar of the Slovene language can be found in the article Slovene grammar.
This article follows the tonal orthography. For the conversion into pitch orthography, see Slovene national phonetic transcription.
Grammatical categories
Persons and numbers
Slovene has three numbers (singular, dual, plural), for more information see Slovene declension.
Slovene also has three persons:
First person (), used to refer to the speaker or a group the speaker is a part of. Second person (), used to refer to the listener or for a general subject (the same as what one is used in English or man in German). Third person (), used to refer to a person that does participate in a conversation, when there is no subject (with impersonal verbs) and when the subject is not in nominative case (e. g. 'I am not home', but literally 'I is not home').
First and third person can be used instead of second when talking to children. Second person can be used instead of the first when one is talking to oneself and want to sound detached.
Tenses
In Slovene, there are four tenses:
The present tense (). The past or preterite tense (). The pluperfect (past perfect) tense (). The future tense ().
Moods
There are 4 verb moods:
Indicative mood (), which is used to state a fact or opinion. It can be in all aforementioned tenses. Imperative mood (), which is used to give commands. It can only be in present tense. Conditional mood , which is used to state possibilities or wishes, for example, If only I were... It can be in present or preterite tense. Optative or hortative mood (, ), which is used to give commands, for assumptions and for encouragement. It can be in all tenses. Both names are usually used interchangeably, but since there are two ways of formation, terms in this article refer to different ways of formation, especially because only one of them can be used for encouragement (and can hence be called hortative). In Slovene literature, this mood is only considered to be extension of the indicative and conditional mood.
Non-finite forms
In addition, there are several non-finite forms:
Long infinitive in / () and short infinitive in / (), the use of the latter one is limited to non-formal situations and mostly to speech. Supine in / (). Two present active participles, in and in , indicating ongoing action. Two past active participles, in and in , indicating a past or completed action. A past passive participle in or , indicating an action having been performed on something. Gerund (), indicating an act or a thing being acted upon.
Aspect
As in all Slavic languages, Slovene verbs are classified based on their aspect:
Perfective () verbs, which represent a completed action. Imperfective () verbs, which represent an ongoing action.
Each verb is either perfective or imperfective, and most verbs occur in pairs to express the same meaning with different aspects. For example, the concept of jumping is expressed in the 2 different aspects is , which has an imperfective aspect and can roughly be translated as to be jumping (continuously), and , which has a perfective aspect and can roughly be translated as to jump (once). While each aspect is represented by a full verb with its own distinct conjugation, certain combinations are not or rarely used in one aspect or the other. For example, imperfective verbs generally lack a past passive participle, while perfective verbs usually have no present participles. Additionally, the present tense has 2 different meanings depending on the aspect of a verb. For imperfective verbs, it has present meaning, while for perfective verbs, it has a future meaning expressing a desire to carry out the action. For example, . "I want to sell the cow" (compare this with the future tense . "I will sell the cow").
Transitivity
As well, verbs can be classified based on their transitivity (). Many verbs in Slovene can be both transitive and intransitive depending on their use in a sentence. However, all reflexive verbs, which are marked by the pronoun (one self), are intransitive.
Impersonal verbs
There are also impersonal verbs; these can only have forms for third person and participles in neuter gender. These are mostly verbs to describe weather, such as 'to rain' and 'to thunder'.
Voices
There are three voices: active (), passive (), and reflexive (). Active and reflexive voice can be in all tenses, while passive voice cannot be in pluperfect or past (and future) conditional.