Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 March 26

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March 26

Latin conjugation question

I am currently on chapter 4: The Imperfect and Perfect Tenses of The Everything Learning Latin Book by Richard E. Prior. On pages 32 to 34, it talks about how to assemble an indicative active form of a verb in the imperfect tense, taking the continuous aspect root plus the tense indicator ba plus the personal ending. Page 34 shows a table of the imperfect conjugation for the verb dō (infinite dare, continuous stem da-).

First person singular: dabam.

First person plural: dabāmus.

Second person singular: dabās.

Second person plural: dabātis.

Third person singular: dabat.

Third person plural: dabant.

Why do three of these lengthen the A of the imperfect tense indicator ba? Primal Groudon (talk) 01:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually a long vowel has been shortened in several contexts (before a consonant cluster, before a word-final stop, etc). You can see much the same in the present indicative of a normal 1st conjugation verb (amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant), except there's no final -m environment there... AnonMoos (talk) 04:55, 26 March 2023 (UTC)