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:
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:
Michelle Proulx - Author 