Latin/Pluperfect Tense Lesson 1

Salvēte omnēs! Welcome back to Latin for Wikiversity. Here you can peruse a new lesson in Latin, in a simple format. If you would like to catch up, you can find a directory of lessons, a classified vocabulary list, and Memrise courses at the links on the right.

Now we will start to focus on verbs in this course once again. Nothing says “back to school” like Latin verbs to memorize and conjugate! This lesson will focus on the Pluperfect tense. This tense is part of the “perfect system,” formed off of the “perfect stem” which is derived from the 3rd principal part. We have studied the perfect tense already, starting in this lesson: Perfect Tense 1 Perfect tense can be translated “I verbed, I have verbed, I did verb.”

The Pluperfect tense expresses action plūs quam perfectum, more than complete, or action that happened even before another prior action. In English we use “had” as a helping verb. The Pluperfect endings are added to the perfect stem and are very regular, identical to the imperfect tense of the being verb sum:
 * eram, erās, erat, erāmus, erātis, erant

Pluperfect tense frequently shows up in complex sentences, but our sentences will be somewhat limited at first. Near the end of this lesson are some sentences adapted from Latin literature that are a little longer. Also, not to discourage anyone, but many types of sentence constructions require the tenses of the subjunctive, which we haven’t even begun to study yet.

As always, it is very helpful to review verbs with all four principal parts together, so you can easily call to mind the 3rd principal part that yields the perfect stem.

Practice
If you have questions or comments about this lesson, please leave them in the form of a comment below. Next lesson will cover some more pluperfect forms, particularly deponent verbs. Grātiās et valēte!