Latin in Layman’s - A Rhetoric Revolution

Perfect Passive Verbs


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I have an intro portion where I talk about my current life status and air some grievances that have been ruminating in my mind. I hope you appreciate the honesty because it's for me, anyways. Just slightly dinged up after being hit by a car yesterday while biking around...

There are two important rules to remember here:

  • (1) the fourth principal part of the verb ─ that is, the perfect passive participle ─ represents past action and is translated “having been whatevered,” for example, “having been praised”;
  • (2) the perfect passive participle plus a form of the verb “to be” is the formula for creating a perfect passive finite verb.
  • Compared to the present passive, the perfect passive is remarkably straightforward. It involves only two verb elements: the fourth principal part of the verb, plus a form of esse (“to be”).

    Therefore, forming a perfect passive verb is quite simple: See, you take the:

    • (1) perfect passive participle and then...
    • (2) you add a form of the verb “to be”: sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt.
    • Because of this, every perfect passive verb form will always consist of two separate words. There’s that!
    • An example of a Latin verb, amo, conjugated in the perfect passive:

      amatus, -a, -um sum; “I have been loved,”

      amatus, -a, -um es; “you have been loved”

      amatus, -a, -um est; “he/she/it has been loved”

      amati, -ae, -a sumus; “we have been loved,”

      amati, -ae, -a estis; “y’all have been loved”

      amati, -ae, -a sunt; “they have been loved”

      Note: Remember to use -us, -a, -um in the singular in accordance with the gender of the subject, or in the plural, -i, -ae, -a. The closest translation in English to the Latin perfect passive is either:

      1. “has/have been”
      2. “was/ were” is also a viable translation, but I would resort to the former before the latter in translation in this case.
      3. ...more
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        Latin in Layman’s - A Rhetoric RevolutionBy Liam Connerly

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