| Verbs |
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The Perfect tense describes a finished, completed, perfected action. For example, "She was walking to school" tells us only that a girl was in the process of walking to school. We don't know if she ever got there or whether she is still walking. And if we add that "she was walking to school when a big dog tripped her," we still don't know if she ever got to school. But we do know that a dog definitely tripped her sometime during that walk and that it is not still tripping her. Tripped is a perfected, finished action. It's over and done with and, therefore, it is in the perfect tense. As you read a magazine or newspaper, see if you can find other examples of English verbs that might translate into Latin as either perfect or imperfect tense.
To translate the Perfect tense from Latin into English, a helper verb have / has / did is often used with the main verb as in, for instance, "I have carried, I did carry, or I carried."
To form the Perfect tense in Latin, find the Perfect stem, which comes from the third principal part of a verb:
I have chosen as examples one very regular verb and two of of the most irregular verbs Latin has ever seen. The perfect tense is PERFECTLY regular regardless of how weird the principal parts of a verb appear. The endings are the same for EVERY conjugation. Incredible, you say! Finally something without exceptions!
The hardest part is remembering to remove the -i at the end of the third principal part before adding the personal endings. This is a frequent error, but you might remember to avoid this if you realize that you would wind up with -ii at the end of the first person singular if you did not remove -i before adding the personal endings, since the 1st person singular ending happens to be -i.
The personal endings for the Perfect Active indicative tense are:
| Person | Sing | Plural |
| 1st | i | imus |
| 2nd | isti | istis |
| 3rd | it | erunt |
Examples:
More About Forming The Passive Voice.
J.Jahnige, May 2004 (Revised and updated 2005)
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