Qualifications to teach this course

Chapter 1

Why study Latin?

All modern romance languages are based on it. (e.g. Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese)
Modern day English has been heavily influenced by it, although it primarily has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon language. (Medical terms, Legal terms, English vocabulary itself)
In fact, a whole study itself has developed because of both Latin and Greek, namely etymology, the study of words and their origins. And having a solid background in the Classics enables one’s vocabulary to improve immensely.
Greek and Roman influence on the Modern World. The set up of Governments, economic systems, religions)
The study of their way of life enables us to learn from the past, learn what actually happened and how, as well as enable us to avoid repeating their errors.

To learn any language and learn it well, a certain amount of memorization is needed.

This is needed to learn vocabulary (i.e. words)
Grammar (how they constructed sentences, in order to imitate their sentence patterns)
To aid us in translating sentences, paragraphs, stories and documents.

Sounds in Classical Latin
Vowels
A as in father Mater, agricola
E as in They me, teneo
I as in hic, timeo
O as in clover os, mores
U as in rude tu, sumo
V has a W sound

Diphthongs are two vowels annex to each other, but said as if only one sound.
Ae as in aisle carai, puellae
Au as in house laudo, aut
Oe as in oil Coepit, Proelium

There are others but those are the most common. The others you will learn as you need them.

So where to start:

With Grammar. Why? Because they are the building blocks of any language.

In any language there are grouping of words…how words can be used in a sentence. The same is true in Latin. They may just be called something different than we are familiar with, but their use in a sentence is nonetheless the same. To quote an anonymous author, “A rose by any other name would smell the same”.

So do not panic in your hearing of another word for something, relate it to something you already know.

Let’s begin with the most difficult element of Latin grammar and get that under our belt, and then the remainder should be easier.

Verbs:

Latin is a verbal language. Many constructions in Latin are verbal in nature. You don’t have to take this down now, but as you progress in your study of Latin this concept will become apparently clear. Verbs in sentences, Verbs to express temporal clauses, such as the Ablative Absolute, Temporal clauses and relative clauses introduced by “Cum”, Purpose Clauses introduced by “ut” gerands, participals, gerundive constructions and the list goes on. You will learn them, as you need them. But for now it’s safe to say that Latin is very much a verbal language. Just take that on faith for now!

So what are verbs? Well verbs are words, Words that express action or a state of being: Action like run, swim, dance, study; or being like is, were, will be.
Understand. Now all verbs have certain characteristics to themselves. They are person, number, tense, voice, and mood. These are the characteristic elements of a Latin Verb. A term also used in Latin grammar is parsing. Parsing is nothing more than a fancy technical term telling me the characteristics of a word. In the case of a verb, it would be its person, its number, its tense, its voice and its mood. Okay? So now let’s look at each one individually and see if we can understand it a little bit better.

The person:

1. The person of the verb supplies information to us as regards who is the subject of the sentence. If the verb is in the first person, the subject is automatically I or We. There is no other choice. It also tells us that the sentence will be expressing an idea or action from the speaker’s point of view. If the verb is in the second person, than we know that the subject is you singular or you plural. Those are the only two choices. We also know that the subject is spoken to. (e.g. you should do this) So far, pretty easy. First person the verb tells us that the subject is I or We and no other. If it’s second person it’s you and no other. Now here is where it can get a little more difficult. If it is not first person and it’s not second person, then it must be third person. With this in mind the subject can be he, she, it, they or an expressed subject like the boy, John, Mary, the bankers etc. Once we know the person of the verb, it makes the searching for the subject much easier, for the Latin syntax of a sentence is not the same as English or Mandarin as we will see later. So the first Charasteric of a verb is its person.

The second characteristic of a verb is its number. Now this is a fairly simple concept to grasp. Number refers to the singularity or plurality of the subject. If there is only one subject, then the verb is singular. If the subject is plural then the verb is plural. The subject and verb must always agree in number…no exception. So by looking at the verb and knowing it’s number, we know whether we are looking for one subject or more than one subject.

Tense. Latin has a myriad (many ) of tenses. This is very different from Chinese. A tense indicates the time of the action of a verb. If the action or state of being is happening now, the verb will be in the present tense. If the action or state of being happened earlier then you are in the past tense (in Latin, the imperfect, perfect, pluperfect.) If the action happens in the tomorrow then the verb will be in the future tense. So the tense of a verb in Latin indicates the time element of the verb. Now in Latin there are six tenses: Present, Imperfect, Perfect, Pluperfect, Future and Future Perfect. Learn these tenses and learn them in this order. It will help you later in Latin. Tenses in Latin are not chose indiscriminately or randomly but very specifically. And learning them in this order will help you immensely, later.

The fourth characteristic of a verb is its voice. The voice of a verb will indicate whether or not the subject is the doer of the action of a verb or will it receive the action. John hit the ball. John is the subject and he is the doer of the action. What did he do? He hit, not punched, not danced, but hit. Therefore, hit is an active verb in this sentence. The ball was hit by John. Here we have the same idea, but we’ve expressed it slightly differently. Here the subject of the sentence is Ball. Now ball isn’t doing the action but is having the action done to it. And the person doing the action is placed in a prepositional phrase. So since the subject is not doing the action, the verb is in the passive voice. There are only two voices in Latin. Active or Passive. Either the subject is doing the action or it is not.

And last Mood. The best way to understand Mood is to think of it as the manner in which the action is done. This may be the most difficult characteristic of a verb to understand. Again there is no such thing in Chinese. There are three moods in Latin. Indicative, Imperative or subjunctive. Indicative indicates a statement of fact. John is big. Laura is cute. Sam is bright or intelligent. A statement of fact. The Imperative mood is used to give orders. Go home. Sit down. Keep Quiet. Normally the subject is not expressed in a command but the subject (you) is understood but not expressed. What one is really saying is you go home. You sit down, or you keep quiet. But instead of expressing the subject you, you don’t express it but begin with the verb. Imperatives…commands. But sometime you have a wishy-washy sort of command in the third person…let them eat cake. Let them jump in the lake. In this case the subject is expressed. But you won’t have to worry about third person commands until a lot later in your Latin studies.

So those are the five characteristics of a Latin Verb.
Person
Number
Tense
Voice
Mood

And parsing is giving all those characteristics of a particular verb.

Now in a Latin sentence a verb, with the exception of the verb “to be”, is usually found at the end of the sentence. As I read a sentence in Latin, if I don’t see a form of the verb “to be” such as is, am, are, were, as the main verb, then the verb will come at the end. This will be the first place you want to go when translating. If you can parse the verb than you can easily find the subject, which may not be the first word in the sentence. In fact the subject may be contained in the verb itself.

All verbs in Latin will have endings, which will indicate the aforementioned characteristics. These must be memorized and memorized in the order given.

Verb endings.
Present Tense

Singular Plural Indicates Singular Plural
1st Person O, M mus I We
2nd Person s tis you you
3rd Person t nt he, she, it they

Now there is no choice in the first person or using an "o" or an "m". What the "o" or "m" means is that one of those two letters will be on the verb depending upon the tense of a verb.

Understand...... Okay.

The second mood of a verb which we want too look at is the Imperative
What is an Imperative Mood? An Imperative mood of a verb in Latin makes a command, it gives an order. (e,g. Go home, take a break, stand up, sit down.) In Latin, an imperative mood can be singular or plural. (i.e. you can give an order to one person or you may give an order to more than one person.) In Latin, you can tell to how many people you are giving a command. Now for the moment, we will only be concerned with an active mood command.

Well how do you form a command. It’s really not difficult at all.
To form a command for either the first or second conjugation, you go to the infinitive or the second principle part of the verb. You remove the re and there you have it, the singular imperative for both conjugations.

e.g. Amo, Amare, Amavi, Amatus go to the 2nd principle part amare; remove the re that leaves you with ama
moner monere monui monitus go to the 2nd principle part monere; remove the re and that leave you with mone

To form the plural imperative simply add te to the singular imperative

So ama amate; mone monete

The te on the imperative let you know that you are speaking to more than one person. Easy enough. Let’s practice.

Then we will do the first days work.

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