Thus leaving chapter two to you, which, I believe, covers the subjunctive. Would that it never existed…
The subjunctive is my friend.
We Beat All Liars.
I’ll bet some people thought I meant the Monday two weeks ago. Oh, no, I meant the Monday today. Really. If you don’t believe me, then we’ll have some extra exercises for you.
I’m going to assume that those who are following this have or have access to Moreland & Fleischer’s Latin: An Intensive Course. It will be used as a reference, but I will not quote extensively from it in this thread due to potential copyright issues. Better safe than sorry, and all that.
I think the pace will be approximately one unit per week, but we may alter that based on popular demand. I think we may need to stretch the first lesson an extra week to ensure that interested parties can arrange their schedules to find the free time necessary. Maeglin and I will alternate the lessons, but that may also be altered based on popular demand.
With that in mind, wish good fortune to those sitting nearby, and take the plunge.
Unit One covers several important points, conveniently broken down into nine sections, labeled A through I. Far be it from me to pass up a good thing, too. I’ll assume that you’ve already read the introductory section regarding pronunciation, syllabification, accentuation, and word order. Since the text also has nice tables and charts, and my vB skills are decidedly poor, I’ll refer you to the text at several points.
A: The Verbal System
In Latin, you’ve got five qualities in a verb form:[ul][li]Person[]Number[]Tense[]Voice[]Mood[/ul]In this first lesson, we can mostly ignore the last two, as they will be Voice: Active and Mood: Indicative. Unit Two introduces the subjunctive mood, and Unit Four (I believe) introduces the passive voice.[/li]
Person, number, tense. Person is straightforward - I, you, he/she/it. Number is equally straightforward - singular or plural. Combined with Person, you can change I, you, he/she/it into we, you (plural), and they. Tense should also be easy to grasp, as it is used to explain when the action took place.
(For reference, Voice is either active or passive, and Mood is either indicative, subjunctive, or imperative. As mentioned above, we will deal solely with active indicative verbs in this lesson.)
B. The Tenses of the Indicative
There are six tenses of the indicative to learn. This may initially be complex, and you will refer to the text frequently, but they will become familiar through use. They are:[ul][li]Presnt[]Imperfect[]Future[]Perfect[]PluperfectFuture Perfect[/ul]These are similar to English equivalents. I’ll follow each tense with a first person singular example.[/li]Present is as you would expect; it describes an action taking place at this moment. “Laudo” – “I praise, I am praising”.
Imperfect is used as a past tense, but to describe a continual action as opposed to a static action. “Laudabam” – “I was praising, I used to praise”.
Future is readily apparently as well. It describes an action that will take place. “Laudabo” – “I will praise”.
Perfect is used as a past tense, but to describe a static action. “Laudavi” – “I praised”.
Pluperfect describes an action that took place in the past, but had already been completed. “Laudaveram” – “I had praised”.
Future Perfect (you see where this is going, right?) describes an action that will be completed by some point in the future. “Laudavero” – “I will have praised”.
C. The Infinitive
An example of an infinitive in English is “to praise”. I’m sure you’ve heard of complaints of split infinitives - in English, that occurs when a speaker inserts another word (usually an adverb) into the infinitive. “To quickly run”, for example. The infinitive has been ‘split’, and that example should read “to run quickly”. It’s pretty tough to split an infinitive in Latin, as the infinitive is a single word. “Laudare” – “to praise”.
There are six forms of the infinitive, depending on tense and voice. The most common construction is the present active infinitive. See the table in the book on page 22 for reference.
D. The Four Conjugations
Other than the verb “to be” which is covered in section G, all verbs are categorized in one of four conjugations. These are differentiated by the present infinitive. The first lesson deals primarily with the first and second conjugations. As a rule of thumb, if an infinitive ends in -are, it belongs to the first conjugation. If an infinitive ends in -ere, it belongs to the second. (Third conjugation verbs also end in -ere, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.)
For example, ‘laudare’ is a first conjugation infinitive. ‘monere’ is a second conjugation. Third and fourth conjugations will be covered later.
E. The Principal Parts
More memorization.
Verbs have four principal parts. Memorize these; you’ll be glad of it someday. The verb laudare, “to praise”, has the principal parts of a structure shared by all other verbs of the first conjugation : laudo, laudare, laudavi, laudatus. The endings are -o, -are, -avi, -atus.
laudo - first person singular present active indicative. I praise.
laudare - present active indicative. To praise.
laudavi - first person singular perfect active indicative. I praised.
laudatus - perfect passive participle. Having been praised. (This will be explained in more detail at a later date.)
F. The Present Active Indicative System of the First Two Conjugations
Latin verbs usually have three parts to them - a stem, a tense sign, and an ending. To derive the stem, in general, simply drop the -re from the infinitive. That is, “laudare” has a stem of “lauda”.
The tense sign is also straightforward. Present tense verbs require no tense sign - consider them the default. Imperfect tenses require -ba-, and future tenses require -bi-.
Add the personal ending to the tense sign to the stem, and you’ve created a verb. See the tables in the book for reference.
To dissect some of the example verbs I’ve used above:
“laudabam” - first person singular imperfect active indicative. The -m at the end tells us that this is first person singular. The -ba- tells us that this is imperfect. The lauda-, the stem, tells us what the verb is - ‘praise’. Put it all together, and you have “I used to praise”.
“laudant”. The -nt at the end tells us that this is third person plural. The fact that there’s no tense sign tells us that this is present, and not past or future. Same stem as before, so this verb is “they praise”, third person present active indicative.
“laudabitis”. Same technique as before. -tis is the second person plural. Tense sign of -bi- is future. Same stem, and we have second person plural future active indicative, or “You (plural) will praise”, or, if you will, “y’all will praise”.
G. The Irregular Verb sum, ‘be’.
You’d be happier now if we skipped this, but unhappier in the future if we skip it. This takes memorization, memorization, and memorization. Look at the table on page 25; learn it, love it, live it.
H. The Noun System
Conjugating verbs may be painful, but you’ve got to do it to nouns, too. Nouns are declined, and have declensions rather than conjugations. Furthermore, all nouns belong to one of three genders - masculine, feminine, neuter.
The purpose of this is to establish relationships between words in a sentence. In English, we primarily use word order to determine sentence structure. “He gives the rose to the woman” is seven words in English, but can be reduced to three words in Latin : “rosam feminae dat”. We’ll use that sentence as an example.
There are five primary cases to cause you pain:[ul][li]Nominative[]Genitive[]Dative[]Accusative[]Ablative[/ul]Nominative - In general, this is the subject of a sentence. “Femina laudat” - the woman praises.[/li]Genitive - Primarily used to indicate dependence, possession, or in English, a noun introduced by ‘of’. “urna aquae” - a jar of water. Urna is nominative, aquae is genitive.
Dative - This is usually used as an indirect object, although other usages will be introduced later. In the example “rosam feminae dat”, ‘feminae’ is a dative construction - ‘to the woman’.
Accusative - The direct object. “rosam feminae dat” can now be fully translated. ‘rosam’ is the direct object of the verb, ‘the rose’.
Ablative - If it doesn’t fit above, it fits here. It’s the catch-all, and will give the most headaches to beginning students. It usually occurs in situations such as “with”, “by”, “in”, et cetera. “Cum poeta laudo” - I praise with the poet. (Ok, ok, I can hear you in the back there sniggering at the word ‘cum’. Go ahead, make your jokes now and get them out of your system.)
I. The First Declension
There are five declensions to learn; however, we are only concerned with the first declension. All nouns of the first declension have a genitive singular ending of -ae. In general, feminine nouns fall into the first declension, and masculine nouns fall into the second, although there are exceptions. There is no way to know the exceptions beforehand; they must be individually learned. An example for this lesson is ‘poeta’, a masculine noun of the first declension.
Dictionary listings for nouns consist of the nominative singular, the genitive singular, the gender, and the definition. For example, urna, -ae, F, urn.
The endings for first declension nouns are listed on the top of page 28.
And there you have it - the very basics of Latin. At the end of Unit One in your texts, you will find a set of drills, exercises, and a sample paragraph to translate. If you have questions on the drills or exercises, please ask. If you want more work, please ask. If you want to skip the exercises, be my guest, but you’ll regret it if you wish to continue learning Latin.
Threadum ad tollendum.
Bumpus, bumpi, bumpo, bumpum, bumpo,
bumpi, bumporum, bumpis, bumpos, bumpis.
Beautiful lesson, LNO! (yes, caps intentional)
Shoot. I don’t know second declension yet. Make that bumpass, bumpae…