Albanian Verb Classes

Standard Albanian organizes verbs into three conjugation classes — zgjedhimet. Whether a verb is Class 1, 2, or 3 determines its endings across every mood and tense, so identifying the class is the very first step in conjugating any verb you encounter.

The diagnostic is mechanical: look at the 1st-person singular present form (the dictionary form) and check what it ends in.

Class 1 — verbs ending in `-j`

Class 1 verbs have a 1sg present that ends in -j after a vowel. The vowel before the -j is the present stem.

punoj

The verb punoj (to work) has stem puno- and class-1 endings -j / -n / -n / -jmë / -ni / -jnë for the present.

Other Class 1 verbs in the corpus: laj (to wash), bëj (to make / to do), vij (to come).

Class 2 — verbs ending in a consonant

Class 2 verbs have a 1sg present that ends in a consonant. The whole word is typically the present stem.

hap

hap (to open) has stem hap and class-2 endings — the singular cells use the bare stem, plural takes -im / -ni / -in.

Many Class 2 verbs alternate stems across cells: marr (to take) shows marr in 1sg/1pl/3pl but merr in 2sg/3sg/2pl. Mutating verbs like pjek (to bake / to roast) palatalize before consonant clusters: stem pjek → piq in piqni, piqja. The corpus encodes these alternations as cell-level overrides.

Class 3 — verbs ending in a vowel

Class 3 verbs have a 1sg present that ends in a vowel — usually -i, -a, or -e. The whole word is the present stem.

pimë

pi (to drink) in 1pl present uses the class-3 ending -më to give pimë. Class 3 verbs are typically monosyllabic and tend toward irregularity in the aorist (dua (to want / to love) → aorist stem desh; ha (to eat) → aorist stem hëngr).

How the engine uses class

The engine's paradigm files (packages/engine/src/paradigms/class-{1,2,3}.ts) implement the regular forms for each class. Per-verb deviations are encoded as cellOverrides on the corpus entry. The full Kaikki/Wiktionary verification (1406 / 1406 cells matched) lives in packages/engine/docs/sources.md.

References