Appendix:Old Irish a subjunctive verbs

The Old Irish a subjunctive, which is the most widespread and productive subjunctive conjugation, is found with both weak and strong verbs. The endings are almost exactly the same as in the class A I presents, with a few exceptions as indicated below.

See Category:Old Irish a subjunctive verbs for a list of verbs belonging to this class.

A sample verb for this class is marbaid (“to kill”). In the present subjunctive, the endings are the same as in the A I present indicative except for the first- and second-person singular. The past subjunctive endings are identical to the imperfect indicative endings of class A I:

In class A II verbs, the endings are the same, but the final consonant of the root is slender (palatalized), which has an effect on the spelling. An example is léicid (“to leave”):

In class B IV, the n of the present indicative stem is absent in the subjunctive, and the endings are added directly to the vowel that ends the root. In the case of vowel-initial endings, the two vowels merge in some cases. As this is a rather small class, many forms are unattested. An example is crenaid (“to buy”); the forms marked with * below are not attested, but are likely to have been the forms.

A sample verb for this class is labraithir (“to speak”). The endings are the same as in the class A I present indicative except for the first person singular forms of the present subjunctive:

Here too, the stem of A II verbs ends in a slender consonant, which affects the spelling:

• McCone, Kim (1997) The Early Irish Verb (Maynooth Monographs 1), 2nd edition, Maynooth: An Sagart, →ISBN, pages 36–39
• Strachan, John, Bergin, Osborn (1949) Old-Irish Paradigms and Selections from the Old-Irish Glosses, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, →ISBN, pages 43–49
• Thurneysen, Rudolf (1940) D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin, transl., A Grammar of Old Irish, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, →ISBN, §§ 597–612, pages 380–87; reprinted 2017 (Please provide a date or year)