Grammar/Latin questions - someone speak soothingly to me

[SorrelZG]

*slow, deep breaths*

 

So, yesterday I memorized the endings for singular and plural, present, imperfect and future tense 1st and 2nd conjugation verbs.

 

I could even apply them. I was feeling accomplished.

 

Then I stumbled on something that described a particular 2nd conjugation verb (that I could recognize the ending of :D) as "present active" --- alongside the word with a completely unfamiliar ending and the description "present infinitive". :confused: ... and then there was another unfamiliar ending ..

 

I was about to run here a little flustered when I decided to google my original question instead. This did not help. I pulled up this page for specto, and now I just want to cry.

 

Please ... I need encouragement.

 

Also, long shot, can someone please use each of those words in a sentence (English equivalent) so I can grasp all these new grammatical terms? :(

[Faithr]

Just take it slowly! One step at a time. It can seem overwhelming at first but you really will get the hang of it! You've got the present active or indicative down. Conjunctive is what I've heard referred to as the subjunctive mood. This is when you are talking about something that isn't actually true, or you are just discussing something in theory. In English we do this all the time, for instance we say "I am going to the store" to express present indicative but don't say "I go to the store". However, we tend to say "I go" if we are discussing something in theory (If I go to the store, it will rain). Does that make sense?

 

The thing about Latin is it is so precise about things that English-speaking folks tend to not think about but the ideas are there nevertheless. This is why Latin is so good for us! We are just sloppier about this kind of thing. LOL! It is good to have to think all these distinctions out, like mood and tense and voice, etc.

 

Then you've got your passive. Passive is when the action is being done to the subject (whereas in the active the subject is doing the action.) We have leftover forms of this. like when we use words like belated or beloved. Those are old passive forms. But we also express passive all the time. The most famous phrase being "Mistakes were made." English teachers tend to frown on passive writing as in English it comes off as weak, but in Latin they really liked to express things in the passive.

 

The imperative is what you use when giving a command.

 

Every verb has 4 (well, sometimes only 3!) principle parts. The first principle part is the first person present indicative, the second part is the infinitive (in English we express the infinitive as 'to something - to go , to walk, etc) the 3rd principle part is the perfect 1st person. We have perfect in English too! The perfect system has a present perfect and pluperfect (past perfect) and future perfect. These are very regular and easy to memorize, thank God! The 4th principle part tells you how the verb is declined when it is used as a participle. A participle is when you use a verb as an adjective, like in English we say 'the running water," or the 'fallen woman.'

 

I hate to tell you this but you'll also have to learn deponent verbs too! They are kind of half way between active and passive!

 

And of course you've got get the other 3 verb conjugations - that would be 3rd, 3rd I stem and 4th. Plus you've got irregular verbs as well!

 

Just remember that Latin speaking children learned all this stuff naturally! It is not beyond your ability. But it is complex and takes a long while to really get it. So keep plugging away!

 

Hope this is clear, and also, if I made any mistakes, I hope others correct me. I am only a humble beginning Latin scholar myself. I'm getting ready to the the National Latin Exam II this March.

[Ester Maria]

Oy. You have mixed some apples and oranges there, Faith. :D I am correcting you because you asked to be corrected - and hopefully at the same time I can clarify a thing or two for the OP.

You've got the present active or indicative down.

Present active is NOT synonymous with an indicative! These descriptions belong to two (actually, three) completely distinct categories.

 

One is a category of TENSE, i.e. a TEMPORAL aspect - "WHEN the action occurs?". If you imagine a timeline, you can divide it into three basic pieces - the present (the point of NOW), the past (the actions that happened BEFORE) and the future (the actions which WILL presumably happen). That is a basic division: all you need to be able to convey temporal meanings in a language are three basic tenses. What we have in Latin, and in most other languages, is an expanded scheme of tenses: *within* those categories we have just drawn (of present, past, and future) we have multiple tenses. So, we can have a "basic past" (I went to the store); a "past before other past" (I had gone to the store before I went to school), a "future before future", also known as anterior future, and similar nuances which convey more detail about WHEN. We can also have tenses which can convey some details about HOW - so we can have a past that is continuous or repetitive (I used to go to store), or a past which is momentaneous, in one specific instant. The English examples I put here to illustrate the point are only illustrations, since the English verbal system works on some slightly different distinctions than the Latin one, so there is no perfect correspondence.

 

The next category is a category of VOICE. The distinctions within this category are ACTIVE and PASSIVE (and, in Greek, mediopassive as well). An active is an action which a subject does, a passive is an action done to the subject (as illustrated in this very sentence :D).

 

So, when we see a verb - like specto - we can ask ourselves, so far: 1) what PERSON is it (and there we have "singular / plural" AND "first - second - third" options and have to choose from BOTH to fully answer to this question); 2) what TENSE is it (the temporal aspect of the verb), and 3) what VOICE is it (what kind of action - active or passive - is it)?

 

So, right now, we can describe specto as:

1) First person singular;

2) Present;

3) Active

 

and also - of WHICH VERB - and that is where we say infinitive.

 

An infinitive, to simplify, is a form of the verb which tells us nothing. Looking at it, you cannot tell WHO, WHEN or HOW - you get a mental image of the meaning of the verb without any further distinctions. Like in English, "to watch", "to go", "to-whatever". An abstraction. When you memorize principal parts, infinitive is one of them, and in active regular verbs it is the -are, -ere, -ire one.

 

Okay, and the third category brought up there: MOOD. A mood is like a "modality" of the verb. Indicative is a "real" action (e.g. I go), imperative is a commanded action (e.g. Go!) which does not exist in the same way the real action does, so it has its own realm of commanded actions; subjunctive or conjunctive (two labels for the same thing) is an "uncertain" action - a wish, an assumption, etc. (e.g. If I were to go).

 

So, to add that distinction, we describe a mood before the tense (since strictly speaking moods are "prior" to tenses, think of it in "moods have tenses" way).

So, for specto, we go:

1) First person singular

2) Indicative (mood)

3) of Present (tense)

4) Active (voice)

5) of the verb specto, spectare, -avi, -atum/s (depending on the classification). The underlined word is the infinitive.

This is when you are talking about something that isn't actually true, or you are just discussing something in theory. In English we do this all the time, for instance we say "I am going to the store" to express present indicative but don't say "I go to the store". However, we tend to say "I go" if we are discussing something in theory (If I go to the store, it will rain). Does that make sense?

This is actually not a good example. Like I said previously, English operates with some slightly different distinctions than Latin, but all the examples you put are indicative at the core. If I were to go to the store would be a kind of a subjunctive expression.

 

Maybe this would illustrate it better:

I know he is well - an indicative / "real" statement.

I wish he were well - a subjunctive / "potential" statement.

 

---

Other than described above, there are also additional verbal-nominal forms (gerund, etc.), but I think it would be too confusing if I added an explanation of that - and that is a separate "realm" anyway. Just focus on these distinctions above.

[Faithr]

That's okay Ester Maria, I knew I was fuzzy on some of it. However, I do hope you didn't frighten the original OP even more! LOL!

[Ester Maria]

However, I do hope you didn't frighten the original OP even more! LOL!

Me too! :lol: I am trying to make people LIKE Latin, not run away scared, so I am trying to write really, really clearly - now, whether what is clear in my mind transfer to the same clarity in another person's mind... is a whole 'nother question. :D

*slow, deep breaths*

 

So, yesterday I memorized the endings for singular and plural, present, imperfect and future tense 1st and 2nd conjugation verbs.

 

I could even apply them. I was feeling accomplished.

 

You should feel accomplished. This kind of memorization isn't trivial, and you are making progress. You may have a long road ahead of you, but the end is nearer today than it was yesterday, and I dare say you've already learned a bit more English grammar than you did before. Keep going! Just wait to you get to the fun of reading the authentic authors!

 

Then I stumbled on something that described a particular 2nd conjugation verb (that I could recognize the ending of :D) as "present active" --- alongside the word with a completely unfamiliar ending and the description "present infinitive".

 

Well, first let's focus on this feeling of accomplishment in recognizing the first verb that you did. That's nifty. You already know more about Latin than most Americans.

 

Moving on.

 

"infinitive" means "without ending". In Latin grammar, the infinitive form means a verb that doesn't have any endings attached to it. In some ways, you can think of it as a "base form" of a verb, from which you can create many other forms of that verb, though not all forms. There are actually a handful of infinitive forms, but far and away the most commonly used one is the present active infinitive, which is probably what your book is talking about when it says "present infinitive", and is commonly known as just "the infinitive". So, the Latin verb for "I carry", 1st person singular, active, indicative is "porto". The infinitive form of this guy is "portare", meaing "to carry". How do you know that "porto" is 1st conjugation? Well, you could memorize it, or, better yet, you could know that all first conjugation verbs end in "are" in their infinitive form. From there, you can then bark out a declension: porto, portas, portat...

 

So, whenever we memorize a Latin verb, we need to memorize not just the 1st person singular active indicative form (porto), but also the infinitive form (portare). That is, when you think about the verb "to carry" in the abstract, you should think about it as "porto, portare". These two verb forms are so important, they are called "principal parts" of the verb. Your book probably has't gotten this far yet, but in order to know everything about a Latin verb, you need to know all four principal parts. Whenever you look up a verb in a Latin dictionary, it should list all the principal parts.

 

Please don't be afraid to ask questions, or quote from lines which are confusing.

[SorrelZG]

Ladies, thank-you all for taking the time to respond to me in my distress. I appreciate it so much.

 

I really appreciate the encouragement (I needed it!) and it's true that I have learned far more about grammar this past week than in all my school years. There is certainly more to this than I realized going in but the more I learn, the more I get why this is important.

 

Meanwhile, I'm still chewing over this info, trying to assimilate it.