The last three chapters of the textbook are on miscellany. The words for “I sit down”, “I lie down”, “I know”, “I am able” are interesting: they have perfect endings, but present meanings. Have I lost you yet?
The most scary part of chapter 18 (this week’s chapter) is the notion of principal parts. For various different verbs, we learn six different ways of forming them: Present Active, Future Active, Aorist Active, Perfect Active, Perfect Middle/Passive, and Aorist Passive.
If you’ve been paying attention to the posts so far, you’ll probably recognise those different names.
From these six forms, we can form 14 different types of verbs: for each of those, there are 6 verb forms. Worst case, we need to be familiar with over 30 of these patterns of 6 principal parts for the exam on Tuesday week: and there’s more memory work beside that – I’m still working on my vocab, and learning the endings for at least some of the 14 different verb types.
Oh, and there’s another chapter to cover in class before exams start!
It’s all seeming a little overwhelming, but I think that’s a pretty common experience. Who would have thought learning a language would be so complicated?