Imperatives & The Weather

DIES IV – SEPTEMBER XVI

I’ve noticed that I have been slacking a bit with updating this blog, for that I apologize. I have been keeping up my studies, but with a busy work schedule, I am finding it hard to transcribe my notes here. I have a few days off class, we are not back until Monday, October 19th, so the hope is to get this blog caught up.

On the fourth day of class we reviewed Latin verbs and discussed Imperatives a bit further. If you recall there are, five parts to a verb:

i) Person
ii) Number
iii) Tense
iv) Mood
v) Voice

And three types of Moods:

i) Indicative (I call, you see, we praise, etc.)
ii) Imperative (call, see, praise)
iii) Infinitive (to call, to see, to praise)

You use the imperative to give a command, and usually in English you do not use a pronoun for the subject. For example:

·Call!
·See!
·Praise!

3 Steps to Forming Imperatives in Latin

Forming imperatives are very similar to the three steps to forming a verb:

i) Find the conjunction
ii) Find the stem
iii) For singular use the stem and for plural ad an ‘et’ to the end of the word:

Verb	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3
voco	1st Conjunction	voca	voca	vocate
video	2nd Conjunction	vide	vide	videte
laudo	1st Conjunction	lauda	lauda	laudate

·Lauda! = the subject is you (s.) = Praise!
·Lauda me! = the subject is you (s.) = Praise me!
·Me lauda! = the subject is you (s.) = Praise me!
·Me ladate! = the subject is you (pl.) = Praise me!
And so on…

Finally we got into a bit of the weather:

·Nubilum est = it is cloudy
·Serenum est = it is sunny
·Sedum est = it is hot
·Pluit est = it is raining
·Nivit est = it is snowing

If you can believe it, today on October 14th, nivit est!

Next time we will discuss the months of the year and start Latin nouns.