A letter arrives from the schoolmaster. Before anyone opens it, a face has already told the whole story.
What this chapter teaches you here
pudet, the verb with no subject. It is said in one person only, and the one who feels the shame is not the subject: mē pudet, tē pudet, “shame takes me, takes you”. One never says ego pudeō.- The family of subjectless expressions is now complete at four: necesse est (cap. XIV), oportet (cap. XVII), opus est (cap. XIX) and pudet. None of them is conjugated.
- The reduplicated perfect. Some verbs build their past by repeating their first syllable. dare gives dedī, and its compounds keep it: trādere → trādidī, perdere → perdidī. It is visible to the eye, and it cannot be guessed.
- The active future participle. The supine stem receives -ūrus, -ūra, -ūrum: prōmissūrus, “about to promise”; factūrus, “about to act”. It declines like bonus and agrees with the person who will perform the act.
- The supine returns in facile factū and litterās trāditum venit: one form in -ū after an adjective, one in -um after motion.
- The prefix does not change the conjugation. prōmittere and dīmittere behave like mittere (mīsī, missum), continēre like tenēre. But it can alter the vowel: claudō gives inclūdō.
- Two more deponents — comitārī and fatērī: passive endings, active meaning. They join ōsculārī (cap. XIX).
- Two words with no singular. litterae means the letters, hence the letter one sends — in the singular, littera is only a sign of the alphabet. verbera means blows, because one never receives just one.
- Where one comes from, and since when. hinc / illinc name the place one leaves; antehāc / posthāc name the moment, and they contain hāc, “this” — before THIS, after THIS.
umquamonly lives in bad company: it needs a negation before it, or a question. On its own, in a plain affirmative sentence, it is wrong.
The vocabulary, unit by unit
- The letter — litterae, prōmissum, prōmittere, īnscrībere, plānus, herī, fortasse
- The face that betrays — vultus, pudor, pudet, pallēre, pallidus, rubēre, quisnam
- The companion — comes, comitārī, hinc, illinc, antehāc, posthāc, umquam
- The key and well-being — clāvis, inclūdere, continēre, solvere, integer, āvertere, salūs
- Merit and confession — laus, merēre, dēbēre, factum, fatērī, negāre, dīmittere
- Handing over and losing — trādere, perdere, verbera, ob
What the app does not drill yet
The future infinitives (factūrum esse, verberātum īrī) still consist of two words and therefore do not fit into a single paradigm cell. The simple future participle, however, is now shown and produced in the exercises.
The chapter's trap
solvit is both the present and the past of solvere (solvō, solvere,
solvī, solūtum). The two forms are spelled alike, and only context separates
them. It is not a misprint.
One sentence to remember
Latin treats certain feelings as things that happen to you: you do not have shame, shame takes you — and that is why pudet has no subject.