Verb endings

I'm sure you've noticed by now that Latin has a whole disconcerting fleet of endings. Endings for nouns, adjectives, verbs, everything. Any properly transitive verb has 134 possible forms. This seems really daunting. The truth is that you really only need four, yes four, to deal with the most common forms: 3rd person singular and plural. All tenses, voices and moods.

	Singular	Plural
Active	-t	-nt
Passive	-tur	-ntur

This will get you about 85% of the way home. And yes, I'm aware that there is more to the ending than the chart. This is meant to be quick and dirty. Of course, you'll want to get all the way there, but sometimes quick and dirty is what you need.

	Main	Passive	Perfect
1st S	-o/-m	-r	-i
2nd S	-s	-ris	-isti
3rd S	-t	-tur	-it
1st P	-mus	-mur	-imus
2nd P	-tis	-mini	-istis
3rd P	-nt	-ntur	-erunt

Obviously there are a few more wrinkles, but this will allow you to get to person and number immediately in only 19 endings. What's cool about this setup is that the perfect tense immediately announces itself with it's odd endings (32%). This is good. It means you now know tense for nearly 1/3 of all verbs. If you know the -ba- signal for the imperfect (13%), you can almost (but not quite) assume the rest is present tense (40%). (Of course I'm making some pretty free assumptions here, they aren't necessarily true. I'm trying to show you how easy this can be.)

So here's the upshot: Four endings get you nearly everything you need to know about a verb. Four.

Note: All percentages drawn from a most excellent book, though not really meant for students as much as teachers. Distler, Paul. Teach the Latin, I Pray You. 

Latin Adjectives, part 4

Now for the quiz. Or maybe you need to study! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Highlight the blank areas after the work answer for the answer.

1. One of these things doesn't matter. Case, number, gender, declension. Which?

Answer:  Declension.

2. One of these noun/adjective pairs doesn't match. Which one?

illi viri
omnis oppidis
diebus longis
Answer: omnis oppidis

3. You look up an adjective in the dictionary. You find this:

fortis, -e – adj – strong, brave

What declension endings do you use?

Answer: 3rd declension

4. Using the adjective, match it with the bold word in the sample sentence.

fortis, -e – adj – strong, brave

Sample sentence: Puer parvus cibum ad mulierem iacit.

Answer: fortem

5. You look up another adjective in thedictionary. You find this:

miser, -era, -erum – adj – poor

What declension endings do you use?

Answer: 1st/2nd declension

6. One of these ablative noun/adjective pairs is wrong. Which one

mari lato
igne omne
viro forti
muliere callida
Answer: igne omne

7. What's the problem with #6?

Answer: 3rd declension adjectives use i-stem endings, and the ablative case singular goes one further and uses -i as its ending.

How did you do?

Latin resources

This is a re-post from my other blog, Dead Linguist. I think you'll find these videos useful. I hope.

1. The introduction



2. A bit of history

3. Resources for beginners

3 1/2. Resources for not-so-beginners

4. Sample of real Latin

Latin Adjectives, part 3

Last time we looked at how adjective/noun pairs do not care about agreeing in declension.  This time, I want to talk a little bit about 3rd declension adjectives. They can be a little tricky.

The first think you need to know is this: they are all 3rd declension i-stem. But with one added surprise. This is really important. Important enough to merit a declension chart. So here it is.

	Nom	Gen	Dat	Acc	Abl
M/F sing	omnis	omnis	omni	omem	omni
N sing	omne			omne
M/F pl	omnes	omnium	omnibus	omnes	omnibus
N pl	omnia			omnia

See how in the ablative singular it is omni, instead of the omne we might expect? Why is that? I don't know but, it isn't a problem. This pattern makes the 3rd declension adjectives just a shade more like the 2nd declension.

The one last thing that is tricky about 3rd declension adjectives is the number of nominative singular forms each has.

If the pattern is -is, -e, then you have a two nominative adjective. Genitive is the same as the first nominative, as you see in the chart. If the pattern is -er, -ris, -re, it is three nominatives. Like the 2nd declension -er adjectives, sometimes they keep the e. Sometimes not. The English derivative will usually help keep you on track with the e. If the adjective looks like a noun, you have one nominative for all three genders. It is very typical for these to end with an -x. To show examples:

omnis, -e — 2 nominative singular forms. See the -is, -e?
acer, -cris, -cre — 3 nominative singular forms. See how the 1st one looks a little like a 2nd declension adjective?
loquax, -cis — 1 nominative singular form. See the -x, -cis?

Next time, a quiz.

Latin Adjectives, part 2

Last time we looked at how declension doesn't matter to noun-adjective agreement in Latin. What matters for Latin adjectives is case, number and gender. The reason this problem pops up is that many textbooks—rightly, I should add—teach the two types of adjectives separately. Usually 1st/2nd declension adjectives first and 3rd declension adjectives second.

For whatever reason, some students want this to happen:

civis Romanis   or   civus Romanus

After all, both words end in -is, right? (Yet another reason students should learn macrons, then the -is of the 3rd declension and the -īs of the 1st/2nd declension look different. But I digress.) Here is what really happens:

civis Romanus

They are this way, because they need to agree in case (nominative), number (singular) and gender (masculine). So not this:

animalibus magnibus

But this:

animalibus magnis

Case, number, gender. Let the declension of the adjective follow the dictionary listing. I bring this up, because 3rd declension adjectives aren't just 3rd declension. They're also i-stem (which I should cover in a post some time). Why? All 3rd declension adjectives are i-stem. So we can't say:

cive forte

Because cive is ablative, singular, masculine and forte is nominative, singular and neuter. Talk about a mismatch. This is the right way:

cive forti

Even though it doesn't look quite right, it is. Remember that adjectives pick up the extra -i in the ablative singular.

Next time, the ugliness of the 3rd declension adjective.

Latin Adjectives, part 1

Latin adjectives aren't all that difficult if you've got the nouns under control. After all, they have the same three features that nouns have: case, number and gender. And those are the features to focus on. Pay no attention to that declension behind the curtain—to steal a line. The reason some students like to fix on declension matching as well as case, number and gender is that 1st and 2nd declension nouns and adjectives are taught first. They see this:

casae rubrae

Excellent! The adjective has the same ending as the noun. All is good. Well, of course they have the same ending. Case, number and gender are all the same. Since the declension also matches—first declension in the example—the endings are identical. That's the real explanation.

Naturally enough, when a noun and adjective happen to be in the same declension, this will rightly be the situation. Whenever vir (2nd declension) is modified by magnus, -a, -um (1st/2nd declension), we will see identical endings.

viro magno  
viris magnis

Again, all is right with the world. I know what your thinking: what if declension is different? No problem. We still agree in case, number and gender.

manui dextrae

Dative, singular and feminine. The endings are different because manui is 4th declension and dextrae is 1st declension. If you want to say

manui dextrui

you need to remember that only case, number and gender count. Pay no attention to that declension behind the curtain. Next time: 3rd declension adjectives.

Holiday breaks

Learning a language is a tricky business. Learning a dead language is a trickier business. One of the roadblocks making it harder is that dead languages are taught in school—whether in a formal school or a home school. It isn't something one learns naturally like, say, French. There's TV in French. Movies. Radio. Restaurants. Other people. All sorts of ways to learn French that have nothing to do with school.

Latin is different that way. It typically happens in a school like setting. However, language is like math in one special way. Both need daily work to keep you from forgetting the newest concepts you've learned. I can add but not solve differential equations. I assure you, I passed a college-level calculus class and could at one time. Same with stuff like Genitive case, if you are a beginner.

So what's to be done? Well, I suppose it depends on your student. Kids who are pretty motivated to learn Latin will be too happy to spend loads of time working on Latin. They're easy, because they'll just do it. Kids who are less motivated may need some encouragement to spend some daily time with Latin. I'd tell you how to motivate them to spend five minutes each day working on Latin over a school break, but I haven't the first clue.

Drop me a comment and tell me your dirty and not-so-dirty tricks to get the unmotivated to sacrifice a few minutes on school breaks.

Indirect Speech, Part 4

You have survived the gauntlet of indirect speech in parts 1, 2 and 3. Now is the quiz. Don't worry, it's easy. Give it a try. After the spot it says answer, drag your mouse across the blank area to highlight the answer. Let's start easy.

1. Combine sentence 2 into sentence 1.

Sentence 1: Ambulas.
Sentence 2: Lux fit.
Answer: You can't do that. You need a verbum sentiendi (head verb).

2. Combine sentence 2 into sentence 1.

Sentence 1: Audis.
Sentence 2: Sol fulget.
Answer: Audis solem fulgere.

3. Combine sentence 2 into sentence 1.

Sentence 1: Iohannes cattum videt.
Sentence 2: Cattus mures capit.
Answer: Iohannes videt cattum mures capere.

 Now for some tricker things.

4. Combine sentence 2 into sentence 1.

Sentence 1: Maria vidit cervum.
Sentence 2: Cervus viam transivit. (But at the same time as sentence 1.)
Answer: Maria vidit cervum viam transire.

5. Combine sentence 2 into sentence 1.

Sentence 1: Cervus putat.
Sentence 2: Cibus erat trans viam.
Answer: Cervus putat cibum fuisse trans viam.

Ok, that's not so rough. Let's get rid of the ambiguous statements in the next two by using the passive.

6. Sentence 1 is ambiguous. Sentence 2 has a passive sentence that cures the ambiguity. Replace the indirect speech of sentence 1 with sentence 2.

Sentence 1: Caesar videt viros gladios tenere.
Sentence 2: Gladii ab viris tenentur.
Answer: Caesar videt gladios ab viris teneri.

 7. Sentence 1 is ambiguous. Sentence 2 has a passive sentence that cures the ambiguity. Replace the indirect speech of sentence 1 with sentence 2.

Sentence 1: Audio cattum murem cepisse.
Sentence 2: Mus a catto captus est.
Answer: Audio murem a catto captum esse.

Now for the big question.

8. Latin uses a tricky accusative as subject and infinitive construction to get indirect speech. What one word does English use to show this? What word (for this purpose) is missing from Latin?

Answer: That

How did you do?

 

Hire me

Yes, if these bits of encouragement and explanation are useful and you like the style, why not hire me? I'm friendly and know what I'm talking about. I've got years of experience with Latin—teaching and textbook development.  If you don't need a Latin teacher, why not take a peek at books I've written?

Latin curriculum review

I'm putting together a page of what is available for Latin programs. My intention is that this is aimed at home-school and self-study Latin students. You can see it here. Right now it's not much more than a rough draft in sections, but I figure it is of more value to you as a published page than waiting for me to get my act together and finish it. So read it and learn about the textbooks available.

Indirect Speech, Part 3

Last time we covered the basics of indirect speech. Here's a sample to refresh your memory before we head to the details.

Latin: Puto Iohannem ambulare
English: I think that John is walking.

But what if we think John was walking earlier? Or that he will be walking later? Right now, all we say is that we think that he is walking right now. How do we deal with tense? All we have is an infinitive. Well, infinitives have tense. So let's stack them up.

Future: Puto Iohannem ambulaturum esse.
Present: Puto Iohannem ambulare.
Past: Puto Iohanem ambulavisse.

The key thing to remember is that the time of the infinitive is relative to the time of the main verb. So the future sentence in English is "I think that John will walk." He hasn't yet, but I think he will. The past in English is "I think John has walked." There's still some tweak left to tense. Check this:

Main verb Imperfect: Putabam Iohannem ambulaturum esse.

See what I did? I changed the main verb, but left the indirect speech as future. This might be said in English as, "I was thinking that John would walk." Of course "would" isn't the only word I could have used. We've got a lot of will/would/may/might flexibility in English, depending on our level of certainty. It's almost baroque really. But I digress. Latin keeps it clean and simple. The infinitive is time relative to the conjugated verb.

What if we want to go passive? I'm going to ignore the possibility of future passive in the indirect speech (I've got a reason). Let's look at an example first.

Latin: Audio meum cattum ratum cepisse.
English: I hear that my cat caught a rat.

Or does it mean this:

English: I hear that a rat caught my cat.

Um. Uh-oh. We've just uncovered the problem with indirect speech in Latin. Both the subject and direct object are in the accusative case in Latin. Never fear! There is a way out. Here's what I want to say in Latin:

I want to say: Meus cattus ratum cepit.

But to say this leads to the trap above. Never fear. Turn the sentence into a passive version of itself.

Now it's passive: Ratus a meo catto captus est.

See how I got rid of the direct object? Good. But we're still missing our indirect speech magic. I'll perform the magic, and you see if you can explain what I did. Again with audio.

Magic: Audio ratum a meo catto captum esse.

And of course if I'm hearing the rat in the act of being caught, I'd say this:

Caught red-handed: Audio ratum a meo catto capi.

Isn't that an odd passive infinitive? I've pretty much shown you the basics and the details of indirect speech. Ready for a quiz?

A defense of Latin

This is my response (paragraphs added) to one woman's anti-Latin blog post.

As a Latin teacher, this is how I make my living. But you're right. For anyone living in or around or near a large community of foreign language speakers, the conclusion, which you draw, is correct. Resoundingly so. However. (And here is my standard defense of Latin when vocabulary/grammar/writing advantages are cast aside—and frankly those are skills separate from Latin, whatever uses Latin may have in teaching them.) In order to know where you're going, you must know where you came from. Latin is our heritage as Western Christians. From antiquity through the medieval era to the Renaissance, Latin was the intellectual language of the Christian West. Even after Latin's second death in the Renaissance, people with serious educations (the American founders for Americans) were steeped in the Latin tradition. Latin is where we, collectively in the West, came from. 

My secondary argument is that Americans (and I see you're living in Costa Rica, so this may be moot) live in a deeply monolingual world, which is a pity in its own right. Any foreign language will broaden a child's education, so why not pick one that will enrich their understanding of their own culture? You're shockingly fortunate to be living in a country where you and your children are able to learn a second language and culture by immersion. You're doubly fortunate to not have to do it as a disadvantaged immigrant. Maligning Latin to people who may have marginal use for low-level Spanish isn't useful. 

I am also painfully aware of how ungood many Latin curricula are, so I won't build them up. I'd also tell someone who wants to learn Spanish to learn Spanish, not Latin—no matter how useful Latin may be toward learning Spanish. Yes, Latin is strangely popular among homeschoolers—I am delighted by that for reasons of light and heat at home—but it isn't for everyone.

Again, I reiterate, maybe Latin isn't for you. But to write it off as foolish or time-wasting is just as bad as me suggesting that learning Spanish is to learn the language of farmhands and fast-food workers. Que no digo. The vast and screaming majority of  students don't even bother with a foreign language at all. So no matter what language (and I'm rather fond of Latin), there's work to be done.

In the Department of Education’s more comprehensive survey of college students, the proportion of students taking no language courses was 58.4 percent. (Panetta)

We in America have a privileged situation. We speak the most geographically widespread language with a very high number of native speakers and economic privilege: English. True, Latin isn't a help on that count, but at the very least it will give students a direct understanding of what their non-native English business partners went through as well as a deeper understanding of their culture's past. 

But as long as elite U.S. schools and universities continue to put little emphasis on the acquisition of foreign language capabilities, American executives will be monolingual and U.S. corporations will have to try and use English or buy foreign nationals who have the language ability where the business is located. A sad commentary for the strongest and most competitive economy in the world. (Panetta)

Sure, Latin has traditionally been associated with an elitist education, but there is zero reason for that to be true. Many homeschooling parents don't know Latin, but that's no reason to give up hope. Need help? I'm here.


Note: I don't really agree with Panetta's conclusions, but his analysis of the state of foreign language teaching in America is quite damning.

Indirect Speech, Part 2

In part 1, I described what indirect speech is. After all, we do have indirect speech in English. A bit of a basic feature. Anyway, in this post we're going to focus on how Latin does it.

Here is my example of English acting like Latin, which is to say it's indirect speech without "that".

English acting like Latin: I know John to be walking.

It can be broken apart into two sentences.

Sentence 1: I know John.
Sentence 2: John is walking. 

Sentence one is the key bit. Look at the verb. Not just any verb will do the trick here. You can't say this:

Garbage: I dance that John is walking.

You need a special verb. Let's call it a head verb for our purposes. Why call it a head verb? First, it is easier to remember than verbum sentiendi for beginning Latin students. Second, the verb originates in your head: hear, see, think, feel, etc. 

Ok, so now to make our two example sentences into Latin.

Sentence 1: Scio Iohannem
       Yes, I know that scio isn't the correct verb here, bear with me for the example.
Sentence 2: Iohannes ambulat.

Again, we meet the key condition for indirect speech: a sentence with a head verb. That done we can do the grammar magic so we can combine the sentences. So you know, it's not this easy:

Latin garbage: Scio Iohannem ambulat.

What's wrong here? I dropped the second Iohannes. He only shows up once. The answer is in the verbs: how many? Two. Any way of putting them in two clauses? No. That's the problem. You only get one conjugated verb per clause. And the verb here is scio. Full stop. Ambulat needs to do something else so it can stop being a rule breaker. 

What can we do? We have two options. We can either go the participle route or the infinitive route. Since we're talking about indirect speech, we're going the infinitive route. So, let's transform sentence to to prepare it to go into sentence 1. (Because the other way just doesn't work.)

Sentence 2: Iohannes ambulat.

Two things are going to happen. I'll do them one at a time. First, the verb needs to become an infinitive.

Sentence 2: Iohannes ambulare

But now we have an ungrammatical sentence. We have an infinitive, which can't have a nominative case noun as subject. Infinitives have accusative case as their subject. Strange but true. So let's fix it.

Sentence 2: Iohannem ambulare

Ok, now we're good to go. Let's line the two sentences up now.

Sentence 1: Scio Iohannem
Sentence 2: Iohannem ambulare

Oh hey, waitaminit. I see the same word twice. Iohannem. This must be where the sentences are joined. Easy! Ok, so now try it. Make two sentences out of it.

Sentence 1 and 2 together: Scio Iohannem ambulare.

And that's the majority of the work in indirect speech in Latin. A few more details are in the next post.

Indirect Speech, Part 1

There's no doubt that the first time students run across indirect speech, they're somewhat surprised. After all, up to that point, it's nothing but nominative for the subject. Then we drop a bomb on them: well, actually accusative case can be a subject too. But only for infinitives.

In English, it's pretty easy to do indirect speech. Pop in your reporting method—see, hear, think, say, etc.—and add a that. You're on your way.

Direct: John is walking.
Indirect: I see that John is walking.

Latin is a bit trickier. There is no word that corresponds to "that". Well, there is, but it isn't used in classical Latin. For now, I'll pretend that medieval Latin doesn't exist. (Not true, it exists and is fabulous, but students should learn the classical version first.) Latin does something much different. It is almost as if you are joining two sentences together. English can, but rarely does, do the same thing. Let's look at a quick English example.

English acting like Latin: I know John to be walking.

See how there isn't a "that" in the sentence? Good. It is as if I joined these two sentences.

Sentence 1: I know John.
Sentence 2: John is walking. 

I did some grammar magic and got our example. This is what Latin is going to do.

Next: I explain it how Latin does it.

Advanced Latin

I'm teaching an advanced Latin class this year. I'm writing about this so that all of you learning Latin can see what you are working toward.

I'm using the Vulgate—the Bible in Latin—as the text for class. Given that I am working with Christian homeschoolers, it may seem like I'm trying to curry favor. I'm not. I think the Bible is a great text to start students in on unadapted Latin literature. Here's why: students should be at least broadly familiar with many portions of the Bible. This will allow them to focus clearly on the language being used and not what is happening.

Twenty years on, I still remember my first encounter with Caesar. He's considered an easy author. But I always felt I was going so slow—and I suppose I was—that I couldn't ever get a feel for the larger context of the work. Then to compound matters, Caesar was talking about things I had never heard of. Who were the Allobroges and where were they from? The Vulgate gets around this. Students know many of the stories, which are (mostly) short episodes.

After students take their work home, we meet again to dissect the text bit by bit. This week we read Psalm 23 (or is it 22?). We shredded it to bits and put it back together in class. It was amazing. The best part? We do it every week.

If you're studying Latin, keep at it. Eventually you can get to where you are reading real, Latin literature. It is closer than you think. Keep it up.