verb complications

The book I'm using for biblical Hebrew started with perfect (past) verbs, drilling in patterns of usage that seem to be pretty consistent most of the time. (Yes, of course there are irregular verbs; every language has 'em, I assume.) And so far we've only covered one of the seven binyanim. (I don't have the vocabulary to translate that directly; examples are reflexive versus causitive versus "just plain did it". It's the difference between "write", "dictate", "correspond", "be written", and others.)

Now in this one binyan (pa'al) that we've been using so far, there are two things that tell you how to read the verb: suffixes and vowels. Both of these are very consistent; for example, "malachti", "shalachti", and "zacharti" are all first-person singular verbs. (I ruled; I sent; I remembered.)

So I was feeling like I got this, so far. Then we hit imperfect verbs. It looked straightforward at first; there are prefixes and sometimes suffixes, and the text introduced a vowel pattern. I dutifully memorized the chart -- and then got to the part where it said there are three different common vowel patterns in this binyan. I don't yet know if there's a pattern to it, but they haven't stated one yet.

Now I had thought that the vowel pattern is how you tell which binyan the word is in -- if one of those vowels in, say, "shalachti" changes, then it means I'm not in pa'al any more and the meaning has changed somehow. But if the imperfect tense includes three different variations within a single binyan, how many variations are there going to be by the time we get all seven binyanim?

Recognition is easier than generation; in time I assume that I'll learn to recognize any of the three variations as imperfect pa'al. Generation is a completely different problem, though; at this point I have to assume that I'm probably not going to spell correctly much of the time.

I eventually internalized perfect; I'll internalize imperfect too. I was just surprised at how much more complex it appears to be right at the beginning (when, I presume, they would simplify if they could).

Pittsburgh mayor

The winner of today's election wasn't really in doubt; the only question was how wide the margin would be. I'm disappointed to see that Bob O'Connor got 67% of the vote; he's going to see that as a mandate for more of the government that drive this city to ruin in the first place. I was hoping that Joe Weinroth would get more of the protest vote, because he actually had good things to say in the campaign and wasn't just running on a "not part of the old boys' network" platform.

Bob O'Connor 39,416
Joseph Weinroth 16,269
Titus North 2,374
David Tessitor 618
Jay M. Ressler 476

(Yes, I actually voted for a Republican. At the city level, fiscal conservatism is much more of factor than the fear of social conservatism. There's not much a mayor can do to screw up the latter; we're not talking Congress here.)