Beginners' Guide to Latin Verb Aspects

Latin is an inflected language where the verbs include a lot of information about the sentence. Even without a noun or pronoun, a Latin verb can tell you who/what the subject is. It can also tell you the time frame, interval, or "tense". When you parse a Latin verb, you deconstruct these and other facets of the Latin.

When you parse a Latin verb, you list the following:

1. meaning/translation
2. person
3. number
4. mood
5. voice (active/passive)
6. tense/aspect

Aspects combine with the timeline to create tenses.

Textkit Greek and Latin Learning Tools defines aspect as "the disclosure of a situation from the perspective of internal temporal structure."

The term tense on its own, when used in Latin grammar, refers to one of the following:

• Present
• Imperfect
• Future
• Perfect
• Pluperfect
• Future Perfect

Some of these terms combine words for time with words for aspect. On the other hand, the "Present" has no aspect specified. When no aspect is specified in Latin, the aspect is "simple." The "Perfect", also called the "Past Perfect" specifies the aspect as "perfect."

In general, you don't have to worry about distinguishing Latin aspect from tense because what we call tense includes both (e.g., Future Perfect) explicitly or assumed (e.g., Present [Simple]); however, if you're new to Latin and a native speaker of English, you may be having trouble because there is a lack of correspondence between English and Latin in the area of aspect. In particular, English uses the progressive aspect. "May be having trouble" is an example of an ongoing or progressive aspect in English. English may be considered to have an emphatic aspect and an aspect covering "used to", the "past exclusive".

Latin has two aspects for its verbs:

1. Simple
2. Perfect

Perfect means the action has been completed. Simple doesn't say whether the action has been finished. The perfect tense in Latin is perfect in aspect, in the etymological sense that it is completed; same with the pluperfect and the future perfect. The aspect of the present and future tenses in Latin is "simple". The aspect of the imperfect tense in Latin is "simple" because the negative (im-) shows the verb is NOT-perfect.

One of the hardest tasks for the beginning student of Latin is to figure out how to translate Latin verbs into English, even after the parsing. Take, for example, the Latin verb form "amo". Amo is

• 1st person
• singular
• indicative
• active
• present

The verb it comes from means "to love". The subject is "I". So far, so good, but is there a helping verb? Do you say "I do love" (present emphatic), "I am loving" (present progressive), or just "I love" (simple aka "present")? The answer is that the Latin doesn't care. Latin doesn't make the distinctions we do.

Classicist David N. Wigtil presents suggestions on how to translate Latin into the appropriate English aspect in his article: "Translating Latin Tenses into English" The Classical World, Vol. 85, No. 6 (Jul. - Aug., 1992), pp. 675-686.