Class 4 — the verb machine, in Malayalam script. Today you get the engine, and one enormous gift. THE GIFT FIRST, because it changes how much work this class is: the Malayalam verb does not change according to who is doing the action. ഞാൻ പോകുന്നു (njaan pokunnu) I am going നീ പോകുന്നു (nee pokunnu) you are going അവൻ പോകുന്നു (avan pokunnu) he is going അവൾ പോകുന്നു (aval pokunnu) she is going നമ്മൾ പോകുന്നു (nammal pokunnu) we are going അവർ പോകുന്നു (avar pokunnu) they are going Six subjects. The verb never moved once. What that is worth: to use the Spanish verb for "to speak" in the present tense alone you need six forms, and Spanish has around sixteen tense-and-mood combinations — one verb is a table of roughly ninety forms, and the common ones are irregular. Arabic marks person, number (including a special form for exactly two people) and gender, in both the prefix and the suffix; one Arabic tense has thirteen distinct forms. Russian marks person and number in the present and gender in the past. Malayalam marks nothing. One form for everybody, forever. And there is a history here: Malayalam is the one Dravidian language that threw agreement away, and that loss is precisely what separates it from Tamil. For you it means learning a Malayalam verb is learning a handful of endings, not a table. YOUR STARTER TEN, all in the dictionary form: പോകുക (pokuka) to go · വരുക (varuka) to come · കഴിക്കുക (kazhikkuka) to eat · കുടിക്കുക (kudikkuka) to drink · ചെയ്യുക (cheyyuka) to do · പറയുക (parayuka) to say · കാണുക (kaanuka) to see · അറിയുക (ariyuka) to know · പഠിക്കുക (padikkuka) to learn · ഇരിക്കുക (irikkuka) to sit, to be. Ten verbs will carry you further than a hundred nouns, because nouns you can point at and verbs you cannot. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.