Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label optative

Moods & the Future - Verb Conjugation - Part 2

Tense and Moody? Must be a Verb... Pāḷi has three moods  in the present tense, which are used to express the speaker’s attitude toward the action. Indicative : used to express statements, proclamations, opinions. Optative : used to express the hypothetical, and also wishes or hopes Imperative : used to express commands and invitations The conditional too is often classified as a mood rather than a tense, though it is most often placed with the future tense. With this exception, all of the above moods exist only in the present tense. Each of the other tenses has only one mood. We saw the indicative mood in the last post.