Latin Grammar: Verbs, Part II: Tense and Mood

This is Part II of the verbs.  For the basics, go here.

Verbs: Tense and Mood

In the last post we covered the basics (person, number, and voice).  All that's left to learn before we start memorizing verb conjugations is tense and mood.

Tense = when the action happens (think: present vs. future)
Mood = indicative or subjunctive (think: "I was." vs. "I might have been."), plus infinitive ("To Be") and imperative ("(You) Be").

Let's dive right in:

Tense

The time of an action, or, when the action takes place, is called Tense.  This is how we differentiate among action that happens in the past, present, or future in English.  In Latin, the tenses aren't exactly the same, but they are similar.  There are six different tenses.  Watch this video for an introduction to what they are and how they work:


I hope that helped clarify things. Just to summarize, here's a list of all the Latin tenses with an English translation to help you keep track of what each of them represents. This is also included in the handout that I linked at the bottom of the page.

Continued Action
Present	I love, I am loving, I do love.
Imperfect	I loved, I was loving, I did love.
Future	I will love.

Completed Action
Perfect	I have loved, I loved.
Pluperfect	I had loved.
Future Perfect	I will have loved.

All verbs in the active mood will have a conjugation for each of these tenses.  That's what you see in the two tables above: the first person for each of the six tenses for the active mood of "to love."  So for the present tense, it would continue: You are loving, He/She/It is loving, We are loving, You(all) are loving, They are loving.  And the same for all the rest!  There are really so many repeating patterns, that once you master these basic differences, the rest will easily follow.

Mood

Mood is the last concept that we'll cover before we start learning the verb conjugations.  I've waited til this point partly because mood is a concept that many find difficult, and partly because understanding mood requires understanding conjugations to a certain degree as well.  There are four different moods that we'll be covering:

Indicative - "I am" - facts!
Infinitive - "to be" - a form of a verb unaffected by person or number.  This is sometimes called "non-finite" or "indeclinable"
Imperative - "Just go!" - commands
Subjunctive - "I should..." - potentiality

I'm going to start with the indicative, because we've actually already seen a lot of the indicative.  It's probably the most common mood, so it should be the most familiar.  After that, we'll cover infinitives, which should click rather easily - at this point, we only need to know one infinitive form for each verb.  Then we'll cover imperative and finally subjunctive, saving the best (and, perhaps, the most difficult) for last.

Indicative

You've already worked with the indicative, whether or not you knew it at the time.  The indicative is simply the mood used for statements and questions; indicative deals with facts.  Tense and person can change within the indicative mood and still be indicative; it's just a matter of straight-forward action.  For example: "I've been to the park" "When will you arrive?" "I'm starting dinner."  All of these sentences, though they contain many various verb forms, are in the indicative mood.

Infinitive

An infinitive is like a neutral form of a verb.  In English, an infinitive form is indicated by the preposition "to," as in: "to love."  Infinitives can be used on their own ("There is no reason to go") or paired with other verbs ("I need to go").  We're just going to look at the present active infinitive for now.  The others will fall into place as we read.

In Latin, "to love" is translated as "amare."  You'll probably recognize the stem ("am-") that stays the same for every form of this verb.  This is paired with the infinitive ending "-are."  All infinitive forms end in "-re," but vowel proceeding will change depending on which of the four conjugations the verb belongs to.  The "a" indicates that amare belongs to the 1st conjugation.  It's important to know this, because each conjugation has its own patterns.  The concept is similar to noun declensions.  If you can tell which conjugation a verb belongs, you'll know what the verb looks like in any form it takes.  

Watch this video to get an overview of the four conjugations: 

Here's a reference for present active infinitive endings of each conjugation:

1st	laud-are	to praise
2nd	mon-ere	to remind
3rd	ag-ere	to drive
4th	aud-ire	to hear
3rd ("i"-stem)	cap-ere	to take

Imperative

You may know what imperative mood indicates simply from the word "imperative": it's all about direct commands.  You may have also guessed at this point that imperative forms are more limited than other forms - after all, you can only give two kinds of commands, singular and plural.  It really is that simple.

For most verbs (aside from some irregulars), the singular imperative form is simply the present stem of the verb.  For amare this would be "ama": "(You) love!" (as a command!).  The plural is formed by adding "-te" to the singular.  For amare, this is "amate": "(You all) love!" (again, this is a command).  And that's all you really need to know for now.  I'm including a video to help clarify this.  He mentions some less common stuff about imperatives, but you only need the basics for now.  By the time we're reading weird stuff like that, it will be very easy to spot and assimilate.

Subjunctive

And now for the grand finale of Latin grammar: the subjunctive mood.  You've probably heard of the subjunctive.  It can be intimidating at first, but it's easier to pin down if you remember that the subjunctive mood is all about potentiality.  Verbs in the subjunctive are not facts.  They describe things that could have happened or that we should have done.  We use subjunctive to describe hypothetical situations or talk about things we hope for.

There are almost as many subjunctive forms as there are indicative.  Typically, your tables will be covering these two moods, because they are used the most.  There is some good news though: there is no future subjunctive in Latin.  That's because the future is always uncertain anyway, and this is something that's assumed with the future indicative.


As you work through the grammar tables, you'll start to see the patterns in the subjunctive as well as in the indicative. However, it can be more difficult to conceptualize what the subjunctive forms really mean compared to the indicative forms. For that reason, I want to provide a playlist here for different subjunctive forms that you can return to as you work through the tables. These will also help you remember how to translate them as you work through Lingua Latina.

A Capstone: Sum, Revisited

Remember sum?  I probably don't need to say this, but sum is probably the most important Latin verb.  It's also the verb that you should try to learn first.  This is not only because sum is used so often, but also because this verb is used to form some of the passive forms of all other verbs - even though sum itself has no passive voice.

I'm including here a table of (literally) every form of the verb sum, or, as it's known in the infinitive, esse ("to be").  Work on learning this table first.  If you don't remember what some of these grammar terms means (like "pluperfect"), be sure to look back through the posts here and the grammar resources to make sure you have it down.  If it hasn't been mentioned in one of my posts, skip it for now; it'll come later.

Before that though, it might help to watch this quick video first, to help review what we've covered about sum:



Compared to what we've looked at, this chart may look like a lot, but don't be discouraged!  Once you know sum, you'll be more prepared for learning every other Latin verb, and you'll immediately be able to form a number of simple sentences.  Just think: this is finally a complete view of this verb!

Good luck!  And be sure to check out the next post for a more comprehensive, organized approach to learning the tables.

Further Reading:  To read about verb basics in Wheelock's, see Chapter 1.  For more information on person, tense, mood, and voice, check out this handout.  Also, here's a link to a handout on infinitives, if you're feeling up to some more detailed information.  Be sure to watch the videos if anything's unclear.

UP NEXT: How to Review, in which we compile all the grammar tables and discuss our approach to learning them.

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