Irregular Oscan Verbs

You might be familiar with irregular verbs in English, Latin, or another language. Think of verbs with unpredictable forms. In English, one example is the verb ‘to go’, which transforms into the form ‘went’ in the past tense. You would not typically expect the form ‘go’ to transform into ‘went’ and that transformation is unlike the regular pattern of just adding -ed endings to past tense verbs, so ‘to go’ is an irregular verb.

In Latin, some of these irregular verbs are sum, esse (to be); volo, velle (to want); fio, fieri (to become).

Oscan is known to have two irregular verbs: to go and to be. Although these forms are still fragmented, and thus, we do not know the entire conjugation of them, we know forms that do not fit the regular paradigm for conjugations.

For example, the Oscan sum/som is directly the same as the Latin form sum, the first-person singular present-active for to be. This is translated as I am. Similarly the Oscan est or íst (where í = e) is directly the same as the Latin form est, the third-person singular present-active for to be. Like Latin, Oscan probably has the roots of -fu and -es for the verb to be. However, there are differences where that ending is used, as the Oscan fust is the third-person singular future-active, seen as erit in Latin.

Source: Carl Darling Buck’s A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian