Latin Participles in 500 words
A super short read for an expansive topic!
Welcome back to bambasbat. In this post I'm going to give you an overview of Latin participles in fewer than 500 words! Let's see how I do.
Or watch my 2 minute video about it here:
There are four main types of participle in Latin.
Present active participles
Perfect passive participles
Future active participles
Perfect active participles (which are for deponent verbs only)
Now all these participles have a dedicated post of their own, so if you missed them, go and check them out here in the bambasbat archive.
But there's also a fifth type of participle that I'll talk about really quickly today. And yes, there'll be a post coming on that, so do make sure you're subscribed to check that out later!
Let’s have a closer look at the different participles
The present active participle
Happens at the same time as the main verb
Is in the active voice
Translated as “carrying”
The perfect passive participle
Happened prior to the main verb
In the passive voice
Translated as “having been carried”
The future active participle
Will happen after the main verb
In the active voice
Translated as “being about to carry”
And the perfect active participle
Is for deponent verbs only (I cannot stress that enough)
Happened prior to the main verb
In the active voice (remember that one's tricky because it looks passive, but it's actually active)
Translated as “having spoken”
I am now going to throw a fifth type at you
There is something called the gerundive in Latin. It's a sneaky type of participle, so I really like it (of course). It's basically a future passive participle.
He placed the wine needing to be drunk on the table.
He placed the wine that was to be drunk, on the table.
The to be drunk would be in the gerundive form in Latin.
It's easy to spot. Here is the same sentence as I have above:
vinum bibendum in mensa posuit
The gerundive is bibendum. I really like that because the -nd- syllable in the middle is like in gerundive. Easy to spot, see!
Gerundives: no direct translation to English
It's one of those times where it's slightly idiomatic in its use, so we have to be a little bit more fluid in how we translate it. “Ought to be”, or “fit to be”, or “needing to be”, they're quite good translations. In the sentence above, I've used “needing to be drunk”.
There's also another use of gerundives, which is when you add the verb esse “to be” in any form to the gerundive as a separate word. You then get what's called the gerundive of obligation.
For example:
censeo Carthaginem esse delendam: “I consider that Carthage must be destroyed”
delendam esse is a gerundive of obligation.
Carthago delenda est: “Carthage must be destroyed”
So that was a really brief overview of participles. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember you can find all those posts here on the bambasbat archive!
Final word count: 496!
Have a great day and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!