Week 6

The Perfect and Imperfect Tenses

Did you know that ancient Rome is not around anymore? That's right! Rome fell in 476 AD when Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus. Yet in all of our stories so far, we've been discussing it in the present tense! No more! It is time to explore the past!

As always, let us begin our discussion with English. You all know the standard past tense, you just take a verb, slap -ed to it unless it's irregular, and you're done! But that's not the only way to talk about the past tense in English, is it?

No! I can say I ran, but I can also say I was running, I used to run, I kept running, I have run, etc. each with own apparent meanings! In fact, you could argue that English has over 7 past tenses! Latin however, only has three: the perfect, the imperfect, and the pluperfect, the former two of which we will cover today.

So what's the difference? The imperfect tense is used to describe continuing or repeated events or states in the past. For example, verbs like I was running, I used to run, and I kept running, would be translated as imperfect tense in Latin. The perfect tense on the other hand is used to describe single, completed events in the past. For example, verbs like I ran or I have run would be translated as the perfect tense in Latin.

As far as endings are concerned, the imperfect tense is pretty simple! Look at the full chart below and the simplified chart on the right! Do you see the patterns? The imperfect tense has the same endings in every conjugation, just with a vowel specific to that conjugation (ā for the first, ē for the second and third, and iē for the fourth) coming before the ending!

The endings of the perfect tense are a little bit more complicated though, and that requires a little explanation. A couple weeks ago, we switched from learning verbs by their third-person singular present forms to their (present active) infinitive forms, which is the standard in many foreign languages like Spanish, French, and Italian. In Latin though, the standard is four students to learn verbs by their four principal parts. That is, learning four forms of the verb for each verb that they learn. Why? Because Latin verbs have a lot of forms, and not all of them are predictable from the infinitive. Verbs have a secondary root, their perfect root, that their perfect tense is based on unlike all the other verb forms we have learned so far.

However, these are introductory Latin sessions and I don't want to overwhelm you, so I'm giving you a cop-out. While it's certainly not always the case, the difference between the present root (the one you get from the infinitive or any of the other forms we've been using) and the perfect root is usually just a couple letters depending on the conjugation you're in, and I've put those letters on the below chart in the Common Perfect Infix row. Just to make it absolutely clear, here's an example of using it.

Say, I have the verb clamāre – to shout, and I want to say I shouted. I can remove the infinitive ending -āre as usual, to get the present root clam-, and add the common perfect infix -āv- before adding my perfect ending to get the perfect root clamāv- and the first-person singular perfect clamāvi. Again, it will not always work, but it usually will. I don't think problems like this will come up too often though, especially since the difficulty only comes when translating English to Latin, since when reading Latin all you need to do it spot those perfect endings (and the change in the root surely won't make the word unrecognizable to you.)

If that sounds too complicated, just remember this!

• The endings of the imperfect and perfect tenses don't depend on conjugation much! In both scenarios, it's just the root of the verb, a vowel (and/or consonant) depending on the conjugation, and the universal ending!

• All I'm asking you to be sure of for now is the difference between the imperfect and the perfect tenses, and for you to look at the simplified forms on the right! The full chart below will always be available to you.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me!