conjugation

It wasn't until many years after the Buddha's death that the sutras, or scriptures, were finally translated into Sanskrit — an intellectually complex language of precise conjugations, whose roots extending back to at least 1500 BC.

But Spanish speakers from four centuries ago might have recognized the unusual verb conjugations — if not the unorthodox pronunciations and words drawn from English and languages indigenous to North America.

“These are the conjugations we need to know,” she said in one recent afternoon class, plowing through page after page of exercises.

Most notably, the conjugations and tenses were difficult.

Throughout, she plays with various conjugations of the word “say” — “What’d he say?”