Overview

Verbs are a very important part of latin, as they describe actions. Like nouns, they consist of a stem and an ending. The present-stem determines the Conjugation the verb belongs to.

To precisely describe an action, a verb must not only be conjugated, but also adress the time of the action and wether it is active or passive.

Stems

Each verb has three stems. The present-stem, the perfect-stem and the participial-stem. The stems are used to from various tenses, voices, persons, numbers and moods. Depending on the tense either the present-stem or the perfect-stem is used. The most common appearance of the participial-stem is in perfect participles and the perfect infinitive.

Conjugations

The present-stem of a verb determines the conjugation it belongs to. This means that conjugations are groups of verbs that are very similar in a certain way. For example all verbs in a conjugation have the same endings.

Tenses

The tense of a verb describes when an action took place and how long it lasted. A classic example would be the difference between Perfect and Imperfect. The perfect describes an action in the past, that is completed, e.g. Veni, Vidi, Vici translates to He came, he saw, he won. All three actions are completed. In contrast, the Imperfect either describes an action that started in the past and is still going on, or a repeating action, e.g. Orpheus et homines et animalia carminibus suis delectebat translates to Orpheus delighted both the people and the animals with his tunes.

In Latin there are 6 tenses:

Depending on the tense, the endings are the same for all conjugations or grouped into various types. For some conjugations, the present and perfect stem are very similar. But for mixed and consonantic, all verbs are irregular, meaning their present stem is very different from their perfect stem. A good dictionary should list both present and perfect stems, so although recommended, learning a lot of irregular verbs is by no means neccessary.

Voices

The voice of a verb describes whether an action is passive or active. An active action is performed by the person. In contrast a passive action is performed to the person. The passive endings are the same for all conjugations, when the present-stem is used.