The most important long mark (of those we have learned so far) is the one over the vowel in the infinitive (second principal part).
Understand principal parts (the way verbs are written in the vocabulary):
-The first two (amo, amare) relate to the present and future tenses, and the last two (amavi, amatum) relate to the past tense.
-Of the first two forms, the second is by far the most important, because that is where the present stem comes from. The stem of “to love” is ama-. The first principal part is there because sometimes that form has little irregularities that can’t be predicted.
-The third principal part is the first person singular of the past tense (“I loved”) and the fourth is the adjective form of the verb, one that kind of has a past tense sense (“loved”, “beloved”).
Understand word order:
-Wheelock indicates that the normal word order in Latin is first the subject, then the direct object, then the verb. This is a loose general tendency rather than a rule. The longer the sentence, the less this tendency applies. A Latin sentence, especially a short one, is correct as long as the words have all the right tags. When translating, go by tags and not word order.
Conversational Latin:
Quid agis? = How are you?
Quid nomen tibi est? = What's your name?
Nomen mihi est = My name is
Amasne ludum? = Do you like school?
What is the difference between a principal part and a conjugate?
ReplyDeleteA conjugation is a group of verbs. (Verbs are put into these groups according to what vowel comes at the end of their stem. ama-, "love",is first conjugation because its stem ends in a long -a. If its stem ended in a long -e, it would be in the second conjugation along with video and moneo.)
ReplyDeletePrincipal parts only have to do with one particular verb, not with a group. They tell you what conjugation the verb belongs in, because you have to look at them (specifically, the second principal part) to find out what the verb's stem is and what vowel is at the end of the stem.
So, a principal part can form a small part of a conjugation, since a conjugation is a group of verbs, but it is not the conjugation by itself.