Article: Most of us only have an intrinsic knowledge of our own language -- that is, everything we know isn't something we realize we know. It's only when you take a look at your own language that you realize you conjugate verbs every day according to patterns you mastered years ago. You say "I go there on Tuesdays" and "She goes there on Tuesdays, too" without even thinking. What's that all about? When you switched to "goes," you indicated that you were talking about someone or something else. You also indicated that whoever or whatever you were talking about was only one person or thing. What's more, you used the present simple tense, indicating habit, a repeated action. If someone could barely hear you and only made out "Goes there on Tuesdays," they would know that someone or something is at a place on every, or at least most, Tuesdays (and not other days). Useful information! If we're getting visual, conjugation is changing part of the word. If you tack on an extra ending, you're putting in information. If you take some off, you're putting in information. If you're dealing with a language that heavily modifies verbs, you could have an entire sentence in one word just by modifying it the right ways. Certain languages have lost their nuances over the centuries (while others have gained). Maybe your language only indicates person or number, but there are some languages where verb conjugation can practically write a book. Here are the common possibilities for what a conjugated verb can indicate: Person. In English, you have to use a subject. You can't just say "...is beautiful." In Spanish, as an example, you could say "Soy bonita." The verb "soy" is conjugated in the first person -- yourself. Number. How many people are doing a thing? In French, you'd say "Je marche" (I walk). If you're walking with a few friends, you'd say, "Nous marchons." Gender. Languages like Hebrew also indicate gender on their verbs. If a female (or something regarded as female) is doing something, -/et/ or /a/ (the phonemic pronunciation, that is) is tack onto the end. Male? Leave it alone. Tense. Many languages use the verb to indicate when an action was done. You'd say "I went to the store last Tuesday" in English, not "I go to the store last Tuesday." Aspect. This is similar to tense, yet different. Tense refers to completed when, when aspect is completed how. An example of this is the passe simple and imparfait "tenses" in French -- they're both past tenses, but they're reserved for different situations. You can have aspect without having tense -- just take a look at Mandarin. Voice. This makes the sentence active or passive. That is "The boy kicked the ball" or "the ball was kicked by the boy." Mood. This covers whether the statement is a fact, a desire, a command, based in reality, etc. An example is the subjunctive tense -- "If I were hungry" quite clearly says that right now, you're not. Every language is different. Conjugating verbs in one, while useful practice, won't necessarily make any other language easier. And yet others conjugate in ways that don't even involve the reasons discussed above! When you're conjugating yourself, make sure you've covered your bases. For example, Korean has seven speech levels. Depending on the formality of your situation, you conjugate the verbs differently! Japanese has different conjugations for speaker-listener relationships. This is called "honorific speech." The conjugation you choose indicates how far above or below you are in rank from the person you're speaking to. That's a fancy term for modifying nouns and adjectives. It's a very similar process and indicates a lot of the same things, it just has a different name. If your language also has declension, you can make charts for those, too. This is especially important in languages with cases and languages that don't have any specific word order. There are some languages where you can say (translated roughly, of course), "boy kick girl and "girl kick boy" that mean the same thing if the nouns are appropriately declined. It's highly possible that the language you're studying doesn't have much verb conjugation. In Vietnamese, for example, you would use a past marker as a word all by itself ("a") and not modify the verb at all to indicate something you already did. While this sounds like a free ticket, they often make up for complexity in other ways!
What is a summary of what this article is about?
Know what conjugation is. Know what conjugation can do. Know how it differs across languages. Know that some languages also use declension. Know that some languages don't really conjugate at all.