7 Latin Verbs Everyone Gets Wrong
Don't fall into these common errors!
Today I'm going to go over some really common verbs that trip people up in their Latin translations, so that you won't make those mistakes in the future.
1. sum, esse, fui
It's one of the most common Latin words and that is why it is so weird! In your dictionary it looks like this:
sum, esse, fui
I am, to be, I was/have been
This is the verb “to be”, and it is very irregular. It also comes in various other forms, so you might also see:
eram, “I was”, the imperfect tense,
fueram, “I had been”, the pluperfect,
ero, “I will be”
All of these can be added to various parts of other verbs to make different forms of verb. So it is very irregular and you need to be able to recognise these parts that all come from the same verb - sum, “I am”.
2. videor
At first glance, this looks like video “I see”, but it is not.
It is “I seem”. It is actually a passive form of the verb video “I see”, but it's often glossed as it's own separate vocabulary entry. That is because it has almost an idiomatic sense. It's not, “I am seen as brave by other people”, that's not how you translate it. Instead you say, “I seem brave to other people”.
So videor is a really important, one along with all the endings for a passive verb depending on tense and person.
3. servo, servare
This one trips people up a lot. That's because we're used to using an English word that looks like the Latin to help us translate.
However, this one means, “to save”.
The problem comes because of a word that everyone learns very early on: servus, “slave”. So people think it means “to be a slave”, or “to serve other people”, like a slave would. But it is not! It means to save someone, so be careful!
4. fero, ferre, tuli, latus
This is my favourite verb in Latin.
I have put all four principle parts in full because it is an absolute nonsense verb and people really struggle with all of the parts of fero.
It means “bring”, “carry”, “bear”.
ferre is “to bear”. Infinitive.
tuli is “I brought”. Perfect tense.
latus is the fourth principal part, your PPP (perfect passive participle). “Having been brought”, “having been carried”.
It is highly irregular. That's one of the reasons I love it. But you do need to know that those parts can change irregularly, because one day you will see tulit in a sentence and you will not know what it means unless you have learned your principal parts. So do get on that one!
Confusing Pairs!
For my final three verbs that everyone gets wrong, I'm going to look at some confusing pairs.
5. moneo, monere
This verb means “to warn”. But there is a problem! This is really easily confused with maneo, which means “to stay”.
An easy way to remember that is if you think of “remain” instead of “stay” for maneo, as you can get the cognate with maneo, remain.
6. audeo, audere
This means “to dare”, as in dare to do something. We get the word audacious from it in English.
This can be really easily confused with the verb audio, “to hear”. We have lots of English derivations from audio as well, but they're all to do with hearing and sounds.
So try and remember:
audeo = audacious
audio = hearing.
7. iaceo, iacere, iacui.
iaceo means “to lie” (as in to lie down, rather than to not tell the truth).
This is very easily confused with iacio, which means “to throw”.
To add even more confusion to this one, their infinitives are the same.
iaceo, iacere, iacui: lie down
iacio, iacere, ieci, iactus: throw.
I've had lots of people try and come up with easy ways to remember this one.
In iaceo, “to lie”, the I and the E are in the right order - iaceo, lie.
Other people have said that, to lie down only has one I, just like iaceo
Some people have looked at the bottom one and thought, “ah in iacio, the two i's look like two little people throwing something between themselves!”
Unfortunately that goes out the window slightly when you get to the perfect of the top one - iacui, “I lied”.
So this one is very confusing.
What I will say about this one is it's going to be very rare that something can either be lying down or be thrown. To figure this one out is just a matter of context. Try them both, see which makes most sense and put it down. Unless you know for certain which one it is if it says it in the glossary or it says it in the English at the beginning of the passage, have a guess. That's my best answer for you.
If you're struggling to learn this one, use context to figure out which one it should be.
Exciting news
Now because all these ones are really easily confused, you might be very interested in hearing my news. There is a bambasbat Vocabulary Tester coming soon!
I've been wanting to bring a vocabulary tool out for ages, and we are slowly getting there!
Now it's in very early stages, this bambasbat Vocabulary Tester for Latin, but if you are interested in hearing anything about the development on that, about how it's going, make sure you have signed up at the link below to receive email notification of when that comes out. You can be one of the first people to have a go at that, and maybe be one of our beta testers when we could do with your feedback!
So, if you are interested, do sign up, if not, don't worry, keep going with your vocabulary, it will get easier.
Thanks so much for joining me, I hope this has been helpful!
What verbs do you struggle with? Let me know in the comments, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!