Conjugations and English Grammar
Are your kids struggling to learn conjugations? Latin is an inflected language which means it is made up of stems and endings. In English, we use two or more words to form a complete sentence. In Latin, one word is a complete sentence. Why? Because adding different personal endings to the stem includes both the subject and predicate. For instance, the Latin word amo (which means “I love”) consists of the stem ama- (which means “love”) + the ending -o (which means “I”). Put them together and you have the sentence Amo which means “I love.”
English: I love.
Latin: Amo.
Before we move on, we will need to review some English grammar. To know which personal ending to use, students will need to identify the point of view of the speaker. What this basically means is figuring out who is doing the talking in the sentence. For example:
1st Person = the speaker (I or we)
2nd Person = person being spoken to (you)
3rd Person = person being spoken about (he, she, it or they)
By knowing the point of view of the speaker, students will learn to recognize which pronouns and endings go together. Understanding this grammar concept will pave the way to easier conjugations of Latin verbs. It will also help older students with writing skills as they learn to recognize subject and verb agreement. For an easier explanation (or for our visual and kinesthetic learners), check out this lesson below by clicking on the Launch button.
How to get started
- Download our free First Conjugation Chart and keep it handy in your child’s Latin folder. Then have your student(s) choose the appropriate personal ending to help them conjugate Latin verbs. Hint: You can use these lessons to enrich any current Latin program. These activities are designed to give your students extra hands-on practice.
- Have your child practice along with our different conjugation tutorials on the Members Content page. This page is full of free content. Just scroll down to the middle of the page. As you will see, the personal endings are similar for most of the tenses. You will see them underlined in our online grammar lessons.
- Have students practice out loud with the lessons for a few minutes every day until the conjugations are memorized. Each lesson will walk your child(ren) through both the grammar and Latin pronunciations of the different tenses. Older students should have no problems navigating the online modules. Younger ones may need hands-on help from parents or an older sibling.
Next steps
To reinforce this lesson, bookmark our I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream video (or subscribe to our YouTube channel) and have students refer to it as needed. As with all new concepts, learning requires practice, patience, and repetition. Even older students will need an occasional refresher to reinforce concepts. And what better way to learn than with videos. If you want to check their knowledge, have them take the quizzes at the end of each of our Latin grammar lessons. After much practice, these Latin conjugations will become second nature. As a result, it will become much easier for students to identify English words derived from Latin and improve their vocabulary in the process. With more than half of all English words derived from Latin, it is no wonder that this ancient language is still a core subject in classical curricula.
Not only will this grammar concept help your students learn Latin conjugations, it will increase their overall understanding of English grammar. This skill will become important later with older students as you help them learn to proofread their own papers. By giving gentle reminders of English grammar rules, they will (hopefully!) be able to learn to catch their own mistakes and become proficient writers as well.
For more free content, please visit our Members Content page. And don’t forget to share our pin below on Pinterest and follow us on YouTube! Until next time, bene vale!
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