In English, the past indefinite perfect tense is can be expressed as “I ate, I drank, I came” etc.

All verbs end in ना. However, when you take this ending off and take a look at the stem, some of them end in consonants and some of them end in vowels. For this post, we’ll look only look at verbs that end in a consonant in the stem or root ending of the verb.

Let’s take a look at this verb: कहना = to say

I said = मैंने कहा

We said = हमने कहा

You said = आपने कहा

He said = उसने कहा

She said = उसने कहा

They said = उन्होंने कहा

1) the masculine and feminine forms are the same in the past indefinite perfect tense

2) You’ll notice that the ने is attached to the pronouns I, we, you, he, she, and they. The ने is used for transitive verbs. Transitive verbs are used when an action performed by a doer affects someone or something other than the doer himself. In other words, the action is transferred to the object. In the sentence “John killed Judy”, killed is the transitive verb because Judy, not the doer John, is affected.

3) Whenever the stem of the verb ends in a consonant, add the suffix आ to the verb. कहना = to say, is the dictionary form of the verb. To conjugate this in the past indefinite perfect tense, take only the stem, which is कह and add आ and you get कहा. Don’t forget to add the ने before the  कहा.