I was going through my bookshelf last night, looking for a new book to read (I ended up reading Naruto fanfiction on my tablet — don’t judge me!!!), and I discovered:

http://wheelockslatin.com/wheelock7_frontcover.gif

Well, technically mine is the 6th edition, but it’s basically the same thing. Right? Right???

This has inspired me to start a series of posts about Latin — aka learning how to write/read the Romans’ unnecessarily complicated language. And we’re talking unnecessary. I took Latin for two years in university, and despite forgetting pretty much everything I learned, I still remember that it was a bloody difficult subject. Also, I appear to have turned British.

So without further ado, I present to you:

Learn Latin 101 — Verb Basics

So in Latin, you have to conjugate verbs. This is true for most languages. Today we’re doing basic present tense. Observe:

                                    Singular            Plural

1st person                   -o                      -mus

2nd person                 -s                       -tis

3rd person                  -t                       -nt

Right. Those were verb endings, by the way. If you walk around saying “o! t! mus!”, people will think you’re crazy.

So, let’s apply this to a verb. The verb “to love” is amare (pronounced ah-mah-ray). First, we chop off the ending (the “re”). That leaves us with “ama”. Now, we stick on the conjugated endings. This gives us:

amo = I love (not ama-o, because that sounds stupid)

amas = You love

amat = He/she loves

amamus = We love

amatis = They love

amant = You (plural) love

Confused yet? Don’t be! This is literally the easiest part of Latin! Now, I feel the best way to learn a new language is to use it in my daily speech. Therefore, whenever you speak from now on and mention loving something, I suggest you use the Latin word instead. Examples:

Oh my god! Those shoes are adorable! Amo!

Amas me, dontcha? DONTCHA??!

Amatis cheese. They are fools.

Etcetera. In our next Learn Latin 101 post, we will learn why 90% of what I just taught you is horribly incorrect. (Spoiler alert: Latin verbs go at the end of a sentence, not the beginning).

For teh lulz: