Everything a Kannada verb does, shown on one verb so the pattern is visible. ಮಾಡು runs through every person, tense and mood below. Once you can see the endings stacking, you can apply them to any regular verb, and the irregular stems at the end are the short list of exceptions worth memorising.
Person Endings — Present
These are the spoken forms. Written Kannada is longer and rarely used in conversation.
Note there is no separate future. ಮಾಡ್ತೀನಿ covers both ‘I do’ and ‘I will do’, with a time word supplying the timing: ನಾಳೆ ಮಾಡ್ತೀನಿ.
The Three Tenses
The three you actually need are the first, second and third. ಮಾಡುವೆ appears in poetry, film songs and formal writing but sounds odd in speech.
Negatives and Commands
Two endings do enormous work. -ಇ turns a bare command into a polite request, and -ಓಣ makes any verb into a ‘let’s’ suggestion: ಹೋಗೋಣ, ತಿನ್ನೋಣ, ಸಿಗೋಣ.
Common Verbs and Irregular Stems
The irregular past stems are the only part of Kannada verbs that must be memorised individually. There are perhaps a dozen common ones, and ಹೋಗು, ಬಾ, ತಿನ್ನು and ಕೊಡು cover most daily use.
ಆಗು deserves special note. Its past ಆಯ್ತು functions as an all-purpose ‘done’, ‘okay’ and ‘finished’, and is probably the most-used verb form in spoken Kannada.
Two structural features make Kannada verbs less daunting than the chart suggests. The first is that endings stack in a fixed order — root, then tense marker, then person marker — so ಮಾಡ್ತಿದ್ದೀನಿ is transparently root plus continuous plus first person. Once you can see the seams, long forms stop looking like separate words to learn.
The second is that the irregularity is confined almost entirely to past stems. Present and future forms are regular across the language, so the memorisation burden is a dozen past stems rather than a dozen full conjugations. ಹೋಗು, ಬಾ, ತಿನ್ನು, ಕೊಡು and ಆಗು cover the overwhelming majority of daily use.
Worth noting too that Kannada builds new verbs freely with ಮಾಡು. Any noun, including any English noun, becomes a verb by attaching it. This is not a modern shortcut — Sanskrit borrowings have been verbed the same way for over a thousand years.
Two structural features make Kannada verbs less daunting than the chart suggests. The first is that endings stack in a fixed order — root, then tense marker, then person marker — so ಮಾಡ್ತಿದ್ದೀನಿ is transparently root plus continuous plus first person. Once you can see the seams, long forms stop looking like separate words to learn.
The second is that the irregularity is confined almost entirely to past stems. Present and future forms are regular across the language, so the memorisation burden is a dozen past stems rather than a dozen full conjugations. ಹೋಗು, ಬಾ, ತಿನ್ನು, ಕೊಡು and ಆಗು cover the overwhelming majority of daily use.
Worth noting too that Kannada builds new verbs freely with ಮಾಡು. Any noun, including any English noun, becomes a verb by attaching it. This is not a modern shortcut — Sanskrit borrowings have been verbed the same way for over a thousand years.
Pronunciation Tips
- Spoken endings contract. Written ಮಾಡುತ್ತೇನೆ becomes ಮಾಡ್ತೀನಿ — learn the spoken form.
- ಮಾಡ್ತಾನೆ and ಮಾಡ್ತಾಳೆ differ by one consonant: dental n against retroflex ಳ.
- ಆಯ್ತು compresses to roughly one and a half syllables.
- Verb endings never take stress; the weight sits on the root.
- ಕೊಟ್ಟೆ has a doubled retroflex t that must be held.
Common Mistakes
- Using a personal ending for a non-human subject. Buses and dogs take -ಉತ್ತೆ, not -ಾನೆ.
- Forgetting ಅವರು takes the plural ending. One respected person still gets ಮಾಡ್ತಾರೆ.
- Using the bare root as a polite command. ಮಾಡು is blunt; use ಮಾಡಿ.
- Regularising irregular past stems. ಹೋಗು gives ಹೋದೆ, not ‘hogide’.
- Learning only written forms. Nobody says ಮಾಡುತ್ತೇನೆ in conversation.
Practice
- Conjugate ಹೋಗು through all eight person endings.
- Put ನೋಡು into past, present, continuous and perfect.
- Make five polite commands and five negative commands.
- Learn the eight irregular stems in the chart above.
- Build five ‘let’s’ sentences with the -ಓಣ ending.