Re: latin verb examples and tense meanings

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

>         In France, when you take Latin courses, you must learn five forms for each
> verb [...]:
> 1st person singular present, 2nd person singular present, infinitive, 1st
> person singular preterite (what you call perfect), supine.
Odd, I don't know what the 2sg present provides that the other four do not.

BTW, for whatever reason, I learned the perf pass ppl masc where most others
seem to have learned the supine:  amatus, not amatum.  I suppose the p p p
is separately more useful than the supine?  (It's a trivial adaptation;
if you know either, you know the other, but still I wonder about it.)

>         What do you mean? In my classes the main irregular verbs had
> irregularities on the preterite, not on the present tense. We generally had
> no problem learning present forms as they were nearly all regular, but
> remembering the irregular perfectum radicals were a torture.
I think Ray's point is that once you know the perfectum stem, the
*endings* are universal.

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