Latin/Verbs Present 3 Lesson 3

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.

New verbs
We’re gradually adding more verbs in this set of lessons. This time, we’ll see some verbs that are frequently used with infinitives. Because we haven’t formally studied infinitives, the sentences for them will be basic, but we’ll have a more detailed lesson on infinitives soon. Also, we have some verbs that are used impersonally (only ever in 3rd person singular, with “it” as the assumed subject); they also tend to be used with infinitives and some have more complicated constructions. Dēbeō / oportet are used in much the same way to express necessity, so we're including examples of each. The English translation, like the Latin word order, can vary greatly. It won’t be possible to give every conceivable variation. This is where translation becomes more of an art than a science!

You have learned a good number of basic verb forms; Latin tends to expand on those basics by adding prepositional prefixes to the roots which change the meaning. For example, you have learned that the irregular verb eō (go). We can add prefixes and get abeō, adeō, exeō, ineō, pereō, redeō, trānseō; and the same goes for many other verbs. We’ll start gradually introducing them … once you recognize the base forms it will be fairly easy to understand the ones with prepositions added.

Practice
I hope you find this lesson helpful. We’ll continue with more verbs next week. Comments, corrections or questions are welcome if you have them. Bonam fortūnam vōbīs!