Basic Grammar – Verb Conjugation I

Well, now it’s time to tackle verb conjugation, which is even more fearsome than noun declensions. There are, like nouns, five kinds of verbs. In this lesson I will cover the first conjugation very briefly, just to introduce you to the world of Latin verbs.

Conjugation – First of all, what is conjugation? Well, conjugation is the way you change a verb to make a sentence grammatically correct – for example, in English, we conjugate the verb “to be” as “is, are, was, were, will be, has been, have been…” and so on. Unfortunately, Latin verb conjugation is pretty crazy (though not as out-of-hand as Spanish and Greek and some other languages).

Several factors determine how a verb should be conjugated in Latin:

Tense – one of the most important factors is, of course, the tense of a sentence. Latin has six tenses, and I’ll list them from the most past tense to the most future tense -
pluperfect (I had played), perfect (I played), imperfect (I was playing), present (I play, I am playing, I keep playing), future (I will play), and future perfect (I will have played).

I won’t go into a full blown discussion of tenses yet, but just to satisfy any possible curiosity you might have about them, I’ll review them quickly. The perfect tenses are considered “perfect” because they describe actions that have already been completed. Pluperfect describes an action completed before a past action (I had enjoyed learning Spanish before I began to learn Latin). The perfect tense describes an action that has been completed (I tripped and it hurt). The imperfect tense describes past actions that were in the process of being completed, but not yet finished (I was running for shelter before the lightning struck me)(or, if you want a less random example: I was gracefully speaking Latin before a large audience until the fly began to annoy me. Maybe that wasn’t less random). The present tense in Latin can be translated into English in three different ways – I play, I am playing, and I keep playing. The Romans apparently did not distinguish between the three (thankfully), but sometimes the Latin can be translated to the English in only one way for it to make sense (unfortunately). For example, “He is playing, despite his mother’s demands otherwise,” sounds like an annoying commentary or documentary, whereas, “He keeps playing, despite his mother’s demands otherwise,” sounds a bit less unnatural (if you don’t frame it in the “annoying commentary” mindset). The future tense is hopefully self-explanatory. The future perfect tense describes an action that you suppose will already have been completed in the future. Unfortunately, it does not fit seamlessly into English. It is especially used in “when” clauses in Latin – When I visit Rome, I will see the Pantheon. As you can see, it is not “When I will have visited Rome,” though the future perfect tense is used in the Latin version of the sentence. Another example – “Next time we meet, I will have learned Latin inside and out.” So yeah, more on the future tense in another post… It is definitely the most awkward Latin verb tense.

The subject of the sentence influences a verb in Latin immensely. The subject does so to a lesser degree in English (I am awesome; you are awesome; he is awesome). The two ways a subject influences verb conjugation are number and person.

Number – Whether or not a subject is singular or plural plays a part in determining the form of a verb. There are few exceptions, and I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

Person – As in 1st person (I, we), 2nd person (you, you all/y’all), and 3rd person (he/she/it, they). Fortunately, verbs don’t change based on the gender of the subject, so the same verb form is used for he, she, and it (and of course none of the other forms change based on their subjects’ gender either).

Two more things:

Voice – as in active (I carry) and passive (I was carried). Latin also has passive and active voices. However, I am only talking about the active now. The passive will be talked about later.

Mood – as in indicative (They flee) and subjunctive (Let them flee). Latin has both indicative and subjunctive moods. However, I will only breach the indicative mood (which is just normal verb usage). I will not tread near the subjunctive mood for a long, long time, as it is evil and is not used in the exact same way the subjunctive tense in English is used (thankfully, for English speakers).

Um, and one last thing that is actually important:

Infinitives – I have to discuss these before going on. Infinitives are the “to” form of a verb – like “to dance,” “to play,” “to be,” and so on. Latin verbs always have infinitive forms. For example, ambulat’s infinitive form is ambulāre and the infinitive form of errat (he/she/it wanders) is errāre. Do you see the pattern? To get the infinitive form of a Latin verb, you just take the stem of the verb and add -āre to it. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple… The vowel in front of the -re actually differs among Latin verbs. First conjugation verbs have an ā, and the other four conjugations have different vowels. In fact, that is how Latin verb conjugations are defined. (There is actually one conjugation that has the same vowel as another, but it’s an exception and we’ll worry about that later). Well, enough with that, and on to the first conjugation!

First conjugation – first conjugation verbs are probably the simplest to decline. They are characterized by having an “a” in their infinitive form.

Here’s a chart for the present tense of the first conjugation verb ambulo (I walk). The stem of ambulo is ambul-; I will bold the changing portions of the verb.

hihihihihSingular                             Plural
First      ambulō (I walk)                  ambulāmus (we walk)
Second  ambulās (you walk)            ambulātis (you all walk)
Third     ambulat (he/she/it walks)  ambulant (they walk)

Do you notice the prevalence of a’s in the conjugation? All but ambulo have a’s (first person singular ends with an o in every conjugation). Also take note that most of the a’s and the o are long.

When I define verbs, I will list their first person singular form as well as their infinitive form, because you can’t tell what the conjugation of a verb is by just looking at its first person singular form. In most cases, however, you can tell what the conjugation of a verb is by looking at the infinitive form of the verb.

So I would define ambulō as:

ambulō, ambulāre – to walk

Notice, once again, that the infinitive of the first conjugation has an a.

Here are some practice sentences (with mostly first conjugation verbs):

Gaius ad Titum ambulat, et Gaius et Titus ad agrōs ambulant. Gaius ad Titum vocat, “Ad bovēs (cows) ambulas!” Titus ad Gaium inquit, “Ad umbrās (shade) ambulō. Calidus est.”

Sorry for the not-so-inspired sentences. However, now at least you can translate them! How exciting. Anyway, here’s a translation:

Gaius walks to Titus, and Gaius and Titus walk to the fields. Gaius shouts to Titus, “You are walking to the cows!” Titus says to Gaius, “I am walking to the shade. It is hot.”

Notice how I translate the present tense in different ways. In fact, instead of translating “Ad bovēs ambulas!” as “You are walking to the cows,” I could also translate it as “You keep walking to the cows” (or, “You walk to the cows,” though that’s kind of weird).

Well, that’s it for now, and if you are confused or just nonplussed by my tortuous logic or bad examples, just ask for clarification.

Tags: verb, conjugation, latin, simple, grammar, basic, first, tense, person, number, infinitive, infinitives