The Workhorse

The verb in a Latin sentence conveys a tremendous amount of information: what the action of the sentence is, who the actor is, whether it’s happening in the past, present, or future, whether the subject actively did the verb or passively received it, and whether the action is real, a command, a wish, or even not true at all. The grammatical terms for these things are: person, number, tense, voice, and mood.

Person and Number

The term “Person” refers to the actor, the subject of the verb. There are three “persons”, grammatically speaking, and they parallel the growing awareness of a developing baby. At first, the baby is only aware of Self; the first person is “I.” Then the baby becomes aware of one other being (usually the mother); the second person is “You.” As the baby grows, he or she becomes aware that there are others out there beyond “I” and “You.” The third person is “he” or “she” or “it.”

The term “Number” in this context only means one thing: singular or plural. Plural of “I” is “we.” Plural of “he” or “she” or “it” is “they.”
In English, there is no longer any differentiation between “you (only one)” and “you (more than one).” [In earlier times, "thee", "thou","thy" and "thine" refered to "you (only one)", or second person singular.] In Latin, as in many other languages, there’s a difference between you, singular, and you, plural.

Here is an example of the Latin verb “Porto, portare”, to carry, in all persons and numbers, in the present tense:

Conjugations

A conjugation is a family of verbs that change in the same way. In English, the number of ways that verb have of changing are so varied and un predictable that it would be very hard to categorize them. The past of “teach” is “taught”, so logically, the past of reach should be “raught” — but there is no such word. The past of “sing” is “sang,” but the past of “bring” is not “brang” — except for very small children. The past of “go” is “went”, which makes no sense whatsoever. English verbs are a crazy salad.

In Latin, thankfully, verbs generally are much better behaved. There are five Conjugations, and a handful of irregular verbs. Conjugations are grouped and recognized by their infinitives, also known as their Second Principal Part.

Principal Parts

The Principal Parts of any verb, English or Latin, are the main forms that all variations of the verb are based on. For instance, if you know that the principal parts of “break” are “break, broke, broken,” then you can create any tense, voice or form of the verb. If you don’t know the principal parts, then you might say things like “I breaked the lamp” or “the dish has been braken.” English verbs have three principal parts, Latin have four.

The principal parts of our exemplum, “to carry”, are Porto, Portare, Portavi, Portatus, and they mean, “I carry,” “to carry,” “I have carried,” and “having been carried.” It is the second of these, portare, which tells us that it is in the first conjugation.

Tense

Tense refers to when the verb happens, did happen or will happen. The three basic time frames are past, present and future. In Latin, each of those three frames can be expressed as either ongoing or finished. So in the present, a verb can either be happening now (I carry, I do carry, I am carrying, all expressed as “porto”) or it can be finished now (I have carried, I did carry — “portavi”). Since each of three time frames can be used two ways, Latin has a total of six tenses. Their names are: Present, imperfect, and future; perfect, pluperfect and future perfect. The term “perfect” comes from the Latin word “perficio” which means to complete, to accomplish or finish. Grammatically, “perfect” does not mean flawless or ideal, it just means finished.

Voice

Latin and English each have two different voices, named active and passive. If a verb is active, then the subject of the sentence is actively doing the verb, as in “Caesar conquered Gaul.” If a verb is passive, then the subject of the sentence is passively receiving the action of the verb, as in “Gaul was conquered by Caesar.” That is all there is to it. If you can find the subject of the sentence, then you can figure out whether that subject is doing the verb (active) or receiving the action of the verb (passive).

Mood

The names of the three main moods in Latin are Indicative, Imperative and Subjunctive. (Some texts also include the Infinitive as a mood.)  Indicative is related to the word “indicate” and it means that the verb is pointing out or stating a fact, or asking a simple question. The great majority of verbs are in the indicative.

Imperative means “a direct command.” So in English, “Cut that out”, “watch this”, “listen up” or “Throw the bums out!” are all in the imperative mood. The subject of the imperative is always “you,” second person.

Subjunctive comes from sub, meaning under, and the Latin verb iungo, to join. Practically every other possible use of a verb other than the Indicative and Imperative are joined under the subjunctive heading. An example of something that is not indicative or imperative: wishing it were so. We still see traces of this in English. You would never say, “I were very rich” but you could certainly say, “If only I were very rich,” or “I wish I were very rich.” (People often say these things.) The indicative “I was very rich” is a statement of fact; the subjunctive “I wish I were very rich” is a wish or a hope, but not factual.