Part I
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Vocabulary

Things are going to become a touch harder now... I'm going to stop giving out the vocabulary list every seven and a half seconds! So if you're trying to translate something, and are stuck on some word, try clicking on the 'V' button at the top of the page. This will open a list of all words that you're supposed to have 'learned' on previous pages.

Ooh!

You are now presented with another look at the exciting lives of Lucius and his mistress wife, Melissa. There are in this scene some words that you don't know... have a go at translating them... so great is the power of wildly guessing!

Isn't that just sooooo exciting? In case you were wondering, here are those phrases that you don't yet know:

You probably weren't wondering, though: you probably couldn't stop yourself from noticing before.

You and I

So far you have 'learned' several verbs:

Notice that they are all forms that go with he/she/it or whatever. But what if we want to say that 'I' or 'you' is doing the action? In English we would use a different form of the verb – for example he stands but I stand – we sometimes add an 's' onto the end. It is the same in Latin: the endings of verbs change.

The ending is affected by the person. The 'I' form is in the first person; the 'you' form is in the second person; and the 'he'/'she'/'it' form is in the third person. In fact, the ending is also affected by the number, tense, voice and mood, but that's one of those things that can be ignored for now: we'll assume that we're always dealing with singular present active indicative verbs (don't ask...).

Here are the relevant forms of the verb that describes an action that is often performed by Felix the dog:

Notice that the first person ('I') form ends 'o'; the second person ('you') form ends 's'; and the third person form ends 't'.

Because the person is always implied by the verb's ending, we don't even need to say 'I' or 'you' explicitly. So, for example, 'I bark' could just be 'latro'; we would only need to add 'ego' if we felt the need to emphasise the 'I'. Similarly, 'you bark' could be merely 'latras'; and 'he barks' or 'she barks' or 'it barks' could just be 'latrat'.

There is another form of verb that we'll investigate now: the infinitive. This is the 'central' form of the verb that is master over all the other forms. The other forms are known as finite forms. The infinitive of the Latin verb 'to bark' is latrare; the finite forms that we have studied so far are 'latro', 'latras' and 'latrat'.

Conjugation

The fine art of taking a verb and mutating it into some other form is known as conjugation. So when we look at 'latrare' and turn it into 'latro' and so on, we are conjugating it.

There are several different patterns of conjugation in Latin. Each verb belongs to one of four or five (depending on what you think of these things) congugations. Well actually that's a lie; some verbs are irregular, and fit to none of them. But for now we'll pretend that they're all regular.

In order to determine the conjugation of a verb, we could look at the infinitive form. Here are some example infinitives:

But... notice that the infinitive alone doesn't completely give it away: if it ends 'ere' then the verb could belong to more than one conjugation. To make it even more complicated, there is another conjugation: some people consider this to be a variant of the third conjugation, while others refer to it as the fifth conjugation.

In order to make things clearer, dictionaries will normally give the 'I' form in addition to the infinitive. So, for example, look up 'latrare' and what you'll actually see is:

latro, latrare
(or latr-o, -are)

These are the verb's first two principal parts. In fact you'll probably see four, but only the first two are relevant for now.

Once we know a verb's conjugation, we can start conjugating it: just remove the 'are', 'ere' or 'ire' and replace it with the correct ending from this groovy table:

Endings

Examples

Being trendy...

The done thing is to use the verb amare as the ultimate example. As this is a groovy, happening course, let's now try conjugating the verb amare.

amo, amare : like, love

If you can't be bothered to think about conjugations and things, just remember these little facts when translating:

• infinitives end -re (are, ere or ire)
• the first person ('I') form ends -o (o, eo or io)
• the second person ('you') form ends -s (as, es or is)
• the third person form ends -t (at, et or it)

Also remember: amo means 'I love'. That's not 'I loved' or 'I will love' or 'I used to love' or 'I have loved' or 'I did love' or 'I will love' or 'I am loved' or 'I would love' or 'I am giving out love': you'll learn how to say some of those at some other time.

I and you... again

For the record, here are the words for the pronouns 'I' and 'you'... try learning them...

Words you should already know...

Here are some those words that you have already 'learned', in terms of principal parts:

To be or... cliché deleted

Here are the relevant forms of a very useful but completely irregular verb:

Try learning them.

Exercise

Translate this little script. We're still following the same exciting household.

If you don't know a word... Words that you should have learned long ago can be found by clicking on the 'V' button at the top of the page. Words that you won't know are listed beneath the script.

Click here an example translation so that you can check your own translation or cheat.

Lucius: ego sum Lucius! ego dico!
Melissa: ego sum Melissa! ego sum uxor. ego domina sum.
Lucius: dominus sum. domina es.
Melissa: dominus es.
canis latrat.
Lucius: tu latras!
Melissa: canis latrat!
Lucius: canis non est dominus. ego dominus sum.
canis sedet.
Lucius: canis sedet. Melissa stat.
Melissa: ego sto.
Lucius: tu stas.
Melissa: ego stas. tu stas. canis sedet.
Lucius cibum consumit.
Melissa: tu cibum consumis

Useful(ish) words

And finally... learn...

sum, es, est: various forms of the verb 'be'.
ego, me, tu, te: the personal pronouns I, me and you.
amo, amare: the cool verb 'love' or 'like'.

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