Somali grammar

The basic form of a Somali noun is in absolutive case. In this case, the article maintains the vowel -a.

The subject of a sentence takes nominative case. In this case, the article takes the vowel -u. If the subject of the sentence includes multiple nouns, only the last takes the nominative ending for the article.

If there is no article, a tonal change signifies nominative case, although this is not represented in the orthography. Some feminine nouns take the suffix -i in nominative case without an article.

Genitive case is generally indicated through a tonal change. Some feminine nouns take an ending, -eed, -aad or -od, depending on the final consonant of the root word.

Vocative case is indicated either through a tonal change or with the suffixes -ow (m. sg.), -ohow (m. pl.), -eey/-aay/-ooy (f. sg.) or -yahay (f. pl.).

Gender is not marked in nouns without the definite article. The gender of nouns does not follow any particular rule and is not generally obvious.

Nouns form their plural in three ways, including reduplication. Many nouns exhibit gender polarity, whereby they change gender in the plural form, e.g. buug-ga (the book) is masculine in the singular, but buugag-ta (the books) is feminine.

There are both subject and object forms for each personal pronoun, with each form further divided into short and emphatic forms.

Somali verbs consist of a stem to which suffixes are added. Verbs in indicative mood exist in four tenses, present, present continuous, past and past continuous, in addition to a subjunctive mood form for present and future tense. Verbs in Somali conjugate mainly through the addition of suffixes, although a very small number of common verbs use a conjugation using prefixes.

The infinitive is created through the suffix -i or -n depending on verb class, e.g. keeni (to bring) and siin (to give). The infinitive is used in present tense only with the modal verb karid (to be able). Verbal nouns are formed with the endings -id, -n and -sho, e.g. keenid (the bringing), siin (the giving) and barasho (the learning) and are used and declined as per normal nouns.

According to Ahmad (2013), the Pareto principle is in effect with regard to Somali grammar. When applied to Standard Somali, the adjective and verb, which collectively represent around 20% of Somali grammatical categories, would thereby constitute about 80% of both spoken and written Somali. This is due to the fact that tenses have an effect on both grammatical categories.[1]

Present tense refers to an action which may or may not be happening at present. It may be used to express something which happens habitually or repeatedly. The present tense conjugation of keen (to bring) follows:

Past tense is used to describe a completed action in the past with a discrete duration. The conjugation of keen (to bring) is:

nb: The final -ay can also be pronounced and written -ey.

The present continuous tense is formed with the suffix -ay- / -na- (depending on dialect) and the endings from the present tense. The present continuous forms of keen are:

Past continuous is formed with the suffix -na / -ay and the past tense endings: keen+ay+ey = keenayey = I was bringing. Is it used to describe actions in the past which happened over a period of time: Intuu akhrinayey wargeyska wuu quracanayey. = While he was reading the newspaper, he was eating breakfast.

Future tense is formed with the infinitive of the required verb and the present tense of doon (to want):

The subjunctive is used only in subordinate clauses and certain prepositional phrases. The present subjunctive differs from the indicative only in that the vowel in the endings changes from a to o. Future subjunctive uses the infinitive plus the present subjunctive form of doon.