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Welcome to the third lesson in Romana. In this lesson you will learn about verbs, and how to recognize and conjugate them. Keep in mind that in Romana, as in Latin, the pronoun isn't always necessary to convey meaning, because the verb's ending tells the tale. All infinitives in Romana end in -re. Verbs are more complicated than nouns. They have a time (past, present, future), a voice (active, passive), and a mood (indicative, subjunctive, participle). Verbs are given in the infinitive form. To be able to add endings to it, a verb has to become a stem. The stem is the infinitive without the -re and the vowel before -re. An example of an infinitive is "amare" (to love). The stem would be "am-". There are three types of verbs, based on the infinitive ending: -are, -ere, and -ire. Each has its own unique set of endings. Here is "amare" conjugated in the present active indicative (the accent indicates the syllable which is always stressed): Io amo, tu ami, el/ela ama. Noi amamo, voi amate, eli/ele aman. Sample phrase: "Te amo." = "I love you." Present Active Indicative From now on, when I give endings and conjugations, they will be in this order: Endings for -are verbs: Another sample conjugation, "vedere" (to see): And another, "stare" (to stay): And "scire" (to know): Note 'stai'. Because it is a single-syllable word, the 'a' of the root was preserved. This is the case for all second person singular present active indicative verbs ending in ARE that have only two syllables in their infinitive form. Now that we have the present under our belt, let's look at the most commonly-used past, the imperfect. Imperfect Active Indicative Endings for -are verbs: The first syllable of the ending this time is always stressed. A sample conjugation, "avere" (to have): Io avevam, tu avevai, el/ela aveva. Noi avevamo, voi avevate, eli/ele avevan. One final tense in this lesson, the simple future. Future Active Indicative (a/e/i)ro, (a/e/i)rai, (a/e/i)ra, (a/e/i)ramo, (a/e/i)rate, (a/e/i)ran A sample conjugation, "venire" (to come): Io veniro, tu venirai, el/ela venira. Noi veniramo, voi venirate, eli/ele veniran. Sample phrase: "Tu amblarai a la casa." = "You will walk to the house." Again, the accent is placed on the first syllable of the ending. Irregular: ESSERE The verb "essere" (to be) is irregular, as you might expect. Here are its conjugations for present, imperfect, and future. Present: Practice Conjugate these verbs in all three tenses:
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