Supine - in Other Languages

In Other Languages

Outside of Latin, a supine is a non-finite verb form whose use resembles that of the Latin supine.

The English supine is the bare infinitive (the verb's plain form) introduced by the particle to; for this reason it is often called the full infinitive or to-infinitive. E.g. 'To err is human, to forgive divine.'

In Estonian supine is called "ma-tegevusnimi" (lit. "ma-action name") because all the words in supine have "ma" in the end (as in "tegema", "jooksma", "kõndima") and they act similarly to the Latin example. In Estonian the supine is also the common dictionary form for verbs.

The Romanian supine generally corresponds to an English construction like for doing; for example, "Această carte este de citit" means "This book is for reading."

The Slovene and Lower Sorbian supine is used after verbs of movement. See Slovenian verbs. The supine was used in Proto-Slavic but it was replaced in most Slavic languages by the infinitive in later periods. In Czech, the contemporary infinitive ending -t (formerly -ti) originates from the supine.

In Swedish the supine is used with an auxiliary verb to produce some compound verb forms (perfect forms). See Swedish grammar.

In some dialects of Lithuanian the supine is used with verbs of motion to indicate purpose, e. g. Moterys eina miestan duonos pirktų, which means The women are going to the town to buy some bread (more archaic forms are pirktun, pirktum). The standard language uses the infinitive, pirkti in place of the supine. In the past, the supine was a more widespread form that was not restricted to just a few dialects within the language.