Gary's answer:

Make sure you do the exercises in the back of the book. For a long time I didn't, but after awhile I discovered that they give you good drilling on the grammar (and they similarly lack context, which can be good up front because you have to puzzle out the grammar a little instead of just "going with the flow") so that when I got to the PRs I felt pretty comfortable with the grammar.

Overall, the order I found to work the best was:

1. 1. Read the chapter in Wheelock's.
2. 2. Read the chapter in Grote and do the exercises.
3. 3. Do the exercises in the back of Wheelock. After awhile I started checking my answers after finishing about half of the exercises; this was great because it helped me catch any bad grammar habits quickly before they became ingrained.
4. 4. Do the PRs. I wouldn't do the SAs first because the PRs are designed to drill the grammar (although not as much as the exercises), often in slightly odd ways. They are designed to help you with the SAs and other reading.
5. 5. Do the SAs and TRs.
6. 6. Do G&M.
7. 7. Do Wheelock's workbook if I had time (which I often didn't).

After all that, I felt I had a pretty good grasp on the grammar, even if sometimes the vocabulary took a couple of chapters to stick. I didn't do flashcards, although that would have undoubtedly helped with the vocabulary.

Jennifer Franks answer:

I'll second (or third, or whatever) Gary's suggestions. The only thing I did differently was to skip Grote (which I didn't have) and do all the workbook exercises except the very last one between the grammar drills and the sentences in the back of the book. If you've done all the self-tutorial exercises and all the workbook (along with vocabulary practise, of course), then the chapter exercises are *much* easier.

Ernie Sjogren's answer:

Also, most of these self-tutorial exercises, especially the translations, can be done from the answers to the questions for even more practice. Going through these exercises "in both directions" a couple of times (and carefully checking your answers, of course) will almost always work wonders, and the exercises at the front of the book will be much easier afterwards.

jiweston adds:

One more suggestion for solving those hard to figure out words. I find Whitaker's Latin-English Words dictionary invaluable. While working on lessons, I keep this program open for quick referral. Type in any word and Words will give the base word, definition, declension, number, gender, etc. An online copy can be accessed at:

Answer from Kirk Lougheed [lougheed@pobox.com]:

Imagine you are talking to a group of people. You want to tell them all to do something. Waving your hand at the entire group, you say

"I want you to go home now."

That's "you" used as second person plural. Then, pointing at a particular person, you say,

"But I want to talk to you privately."

That's "you" used as second person singular.

Answer from Kirk:
Nearly all first conjugation verbs have principal parts that follow the pattern of amO: "amO, amAre, amavI, amatus". In the case of "dO, dare, dedI, datus", yes, the infinitive has a short "a", but the more glaring irregularity is with the third part, the perfect stem. You would have expected something like "*davi", rather than "dedI".

The verb "stO, stAre, stetI, status" meaning "to stand" is another slightly irregular first conjugation verb.

Both verbs conjugate quite regularly once you get past the slightly odd-ball perfect stem.

There are several normal patterns for 2nd-conjugation verbs. ValeO follows one of them and VideO another.

ValeO, valEre, valuI, valitUrum.
VideO, vidEre, vidI, visum.

Cassell's answers this question in its preface (p. viii, under Quantity):

"The natural length of vowels has been indicated...wherever this seemed helpful....But short vowels which are followed by two consonants have generally been left unmarked....So have many vowels in final syllables, provided that they conform to some regular type of declension or conjugation...."

Meredith's answer:

You'd be much better off actually learning all four Principal Parts now. Sooner or later, you will need to know them all. You need the first two now; you'll need the third once we get to Chapter 12, and you'll need the fourth when we get to Chapter 18. And it'll be a lot easier to learn them now than to go back at Chapter 12 and try to patch the third principal part on to the first two principal parts of all the verbs you know.

Gail Begin's answer:

Learn the "principle parts" as you learn each verb. It may seem like a lot and pointless since you have not learned what they are for yet, but when you get to chapter 12 it will be much easier. I just started chapter 12 and I wish I had been better about chanting the principle parts along with the conjugation and meaning. Just my opinion, but I think Wheelock actually tells us in the text to learn the principle parts along with the meaning and conjugation.

Ernie's answer:

Gail is right. You'll have to knows these principal parts eventually, so now is the time to start. It is difficult to memorize such (right now) meaningless things, true. Maybe it'll take a week or three to get into the swing of it. But you can do it, and it gets easier the more you do it. Gail's mention of "chanting" them is a very good suggestion. When I learned them, I made a little cassette tape to listen to.

And take heart -- there are "patterns" of principal parts of verbs, and once you are familiar with some, many of the new ones start looking familiar, and they get to be quite easy to memorize.

Originally Wheelock had the student put off memorizing the principal parts until chapter 12. Then all of the principal parts of ALL of the verbs from those first chapters were to be learned. That's the way the 3rd edition was, which I learned from. Believe me that was a tough chapter to get through! I'm sure you'll be happier learning them gradually, verb by verb.

So keep working at it. If nothing seems to work well, say so, and perhaps people on the list will know good ways to memorize. And once you've got some principal parts memorized, every time you see a verb you know, say its principal parts, all four, to yourself for review.

Dean Denis' answer:

This is a very good question because it deals with the approach to studying Latin. I have the following recommendations.

It is more important that you memorize the principal parts of each verb than its meaning. This is because if you memorize the principal parts, you can recognize a verb regardless of how it is used in a sentence and find the meaning in a dictionary. All the principal parts will be explained in good time.

For the nouns, it is more important that you memorize the gender and the declension than the meaning.

This doesn't mean that you should not make an effort to memorize the meanings. But, the meanings of words is not where English speakers have the greatest difficulty with Latin. The greater the effort that is made in learning gender and declension for nouns and principal parts and conjugations for verbs, the easier Latin will be later.

Meredith's answer:

Ernie's answer:

You are exactly right. Wheelock is explaining the same thing for Latin as you just explained for Spanish, and he is doing it in the same order. The general introduction to this is on pages 1 and 2 of the book, where he talks about "person" and "number," etc.; the "practical" stuff is on page four, where he describes two "model" verbs, "laudo" and "moneo."

What he is doing with "laudo" and "moneo" is giving you two major patterns that Latin verbs take. It works just the same way as "ar" "ir" and "er" verbs in Spanish, except Latin has 5 main types. These are the first two types. "Laudo" is the model for the first conjugation. "Moneo" is the model for the second.

Let's discuss "laudo"; moneo works just the same way but uses slightly different endings. "Laudo" is presented just the way you described Spanish (read down the left column, and then read down the right):

laudo -- I praise	|	laudamus -- we praise
laudas -- you praise	|	laudatis -- you (plural) praise
laudat -- he praises	|	laudant -- they praise

In a way, Latin and Spanish do verbs backwards from English. We mention the person who is doing the action _before_ the verb. For instance, "I praise," "YOU praise," etc. Latin (and Spanish) indicate this person at the end of the verb: "laudO," "laudAS," etc.

So what you need to do here is:

recognize that "laudo" is actually formed of two parts (laud-o), the stem (laud) and the ending (o). The stem is the same all the way through (laud), but the endings change (o, as, at, etc.).

recognize that many other verbs will be _just_ like laudo, too. There are examples in the vocabulary at the end of the chapter: for instance, "amo," which has the stem of "am" but _exactly_ the same endings as "laudo" -- "o, as, at, etc. And so, whenever you see a verb like this ending in "o" you know that it means the "I" form -- "amO" means "I love"; or if you see one ending in "ant" you know it is the "they" form -- "amANT" means "they love."

recognize (and memorize) the endings for these verbs like laudo (-o, -as, -a, -amus, -atis, -ant, and memorize these forms of "laudo." You memorize in this order, always:

laudo, laudas, laudat, laudamus, laudatis, laudant.

(That is the proper order is to go through the singular forms from first person to third, and then through the plural forms from first person to third. Unless this has changed since I was in Jr. High School, that's the way you do Spanish, too.)

If all this makes sense, great! Memorize the verbs -- don't forget to do "moneo" in the same way, after you've done "laudo" -- and write back with more questions. If something doesn't make sense, write back right away.

Ernie's answer:

These are the Principal Parts of the verb. I don't recall being taught anything like these in Spanish (Spanish verbs are in a way easier to learn than Latin verbs, I guess), so we'll just talk about Latin.

These principal parts were selected sometime in the dim past as the fewest necessary words needed to identify a Latin verb. If you know these four forms of any given Latin verb, you can use the rules that you will learn and make _all_ of the other forms of that verb. These four "parts" don't have any _logical_ relationship. They were chosen simply becuase they are what is needed to figure out all the other forms.

Two of them you will use right away -- the first two. The second two you won't need until chapter 12, or later.

Now that I have said all that, here is what they mean, and what they are called:

• Laudo = I praise -- the first person singular, present indicative active -- you understand this one
• Laudare = to praise -- the present active infinitive (like "hablar" is the infinitive for "hablo" in Spanish)
• Laudavi = I praised, I have praised -- this is the first person singular of the perfect active indicative tense (you'll take it up in chapter 12)
• Laudatum = [it was] praised -- this is the perfect passive participle (neuter) (it can also be something else, but don't worry about that, and you'll take up its use as a participle in chapter 12 or a little later -- I forget)

An explanation of the principal parts is given at the beginning of chapter twelve. You may want to look it over to see if it helps. When I learned from an earlier edition of Wheelock's book, the principal parts of verbs were not to be memorized until chapter 12, which is why the explanation is there. But that was one whale of a lot of principal parts to memorize all at once, and so you are asked to memorize these even before you understand what good they are, in order to avoid doing them all at once.

When you conjugate a verb, you add the tense marker (if there is one), and then the personal endings. The tense marker for the present indicative tense is the characteristic vowel of the conjugation. A for first conjugation, E for second conjugation. Note that both are shortened before the personal endings -t and -nt, and they are either shortened, or disappear entirely, before -O.)

The principal parts are the principal parts because they provide you with stems with which to conjugate the verb in all its forms. Consider, for example, the wildly irregular verb "ferO, ferre, tulI, lAtus," "to bear".

You need the first principal part because it's the form under which the verb is listed in the dictionary, and because it gives you some clues about how to conjugate the verb (in particular, it helps you tell second conjugation from third conjugation).

The second principal part gives you the stem for the present, imperfect and future indicative (both active and passive). That's the one you're working with now. So the present indicative of "fero" uses the stem "fer-".

The third principal part gives you the stem for the perfect, pluperfect (past perfect) and future perfect indicative active. You'll start to need it in Chapter 12. So the perfect indicative active of "fero" uses the stem "tul-".

The fourth principal part gives you the stem for the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect indicative passive. You'll start to need it in Chapter 19. So the perfect indicative passive of "fero" starts with "lAtus".

Hey, did you swallow a dictionary? Say that over again in English!

Hm. Let me try again. I'm the daughter of an English teacher, and sometimes it shows. There are several different ways to teach English grammar: the series that will be most helpful to you (I'm assuming you're in the U.S.) is Warriner's, which teaches English as though it were Latin.

First, let me explain tenses. "Tense" comes from a word meaning "time". Verbs (English and Latin both) are classified by their tense -- by whether the action is taking place in the past, the present, or the future. In English, for most verbs, we make the past tense by adding -ed. We make the future tense by adding the helping verb "will". Clear so far? Past and present and future, all together, are called a "system" of tenses, because one leads into the other. Something will happen -- no, it is happening now! -- there, it happened.

But sometimes, in English, we want to specify that an action is already over with. We want to do this particularly when the sequence of events is important. To do that, in English, we add the helping verb "had" to the past tense. We add the helping verb "have" to the present tense, and we add the helping verbs "will have" to the future tense. "But, Your Honor, my client had gone to Cincinnati the night before the car was stolen! He has always been a man of integrity. This is only the beginning of the trial. Surely -- before the defense has even spoken! -- the jury will not have already tried and convicted this man in their hearts!"

That last sentence sounds weird, because in English we very rarely speak of an action, still in the future, which has already been completed at the time the whatever's going on at the main part of the sentence takes place. In Latin, that happens somewhat more often, mainly because the Romans had the interesting habit of writing their letters from the perspective of the point in time at which they would be read: "Dear Julius, I will have gone to the store on Tuesday...." (The writer is writing this on Monday, and expects Julius to get and read the letter on, say, Thursday.)

So, anyway, these tenses too make a system. We call them the "perfect" tenses, not because they're all that great, but because "perficio", in Latin, means "to finish". Perfect tenses are the tenses where the action is already over with. And in English, we call them past perfect, present perfect, and future perfect. In Latin, we call them pluperfect (which comes from "plus perfect," or, as we would say, "perfect plus"), perfect, and future perfect.

Now, then, on to the Principal Parts. English verbs are pretty simple -- just one word, always the same -- maybe you add -ing to it, or -ed, but otherwise not much happens.

Latin verbs have three parts, the stem, which tells you the meaning of the word, the tense marker, which is a letter or two added on to the stem which tells you the tense, and the personal ending, which, as its name implies, tells you both who is doing the action, and how many people are doing it. The personal ending replaces the pronoun. Latin does have personal pronouns, but they are only used for emphasis.

First person is "I" or "we" in English. Second person is "You" in English. There are a bunch of different ways to do second person plural in English, none of them quite standard speech, like y'all, you all, youse, or you'uns. Third person is "He", "she", "it" or "they" in English. Think of the rhyme, "Don't tax you; don't tax me. Tax that guy behind the tree." Second person, first person, third person.

The "voice" of a verb is whether it is active or passive. The subject of the sentence is doing the action if the verb is active, "Karen hit the ball!" The subject of the sentence is experiencing the action if the verb is passive. "Karen was hit by the ball!"

The stem, the part that carries the meaning, is different in different tenses. You get the stem for the ordinary past-present-future tenses from the second Principal Part. You get the stem for the perfect active tenses from the third Principal Part. And you get the stem for the perfect passive tenses from the fourth Principal Part.

I'm sorry I wasn't clearer. You should translate the sentences into good, idiomatic English! When I asked you to consider each Latin word in order, I was trying to head off the beginners' tendency to think, "Well, first we need a subject -- Aha! Here's a word with what could be a nominative ending; I guess that's our subject.-- and then a verb -- Yes! Here's the verb...etc."

So I was trying to tell you to look at "Labor," and think, "Hmm. Nominative, must be the subject," and then to look at "me" and think "Hmm. Accusative or ablative," and then to look at "vocat" and think, "Hmm, a singular verb. Yes, that matches 'labor'. So 'Labor' must indeed be the subject, and 'me' must be the direct object." *Then* you start putting the sentences into English, and to do that you of course put the subject first, then the verb, then the object, because that's how we do things in English.

The answers to many of the chapters of Wheelock can be found on the Internet. If you do use these, be very careful and don't just use the answers as you find them; many of them are for the fifth edition of Wheelock's, and so if you use them as-is you will likely get the exercise wrong. Many of the changes made in Wheelock's sixth edition are exactly the kinds of changes that will trip up a person trying to use answers from the fifth edition.

Kirk's answer:

All the words you need to know are given in the vocabularies or as notes with the sentences. There is also a glossary in the back. I suspect you're having problems with the concept that Latin is an inflected language. There are roots and endings. You need to know both to figure what a word means. If you don't know that "dant" is formed from the root verb "do, dare, dedi, datus" and "-nt" is a suffix meaning "they", you're in trouble, since you won't find "dant" in any dictionary. Think of Latin as a language with two vocabularies -- the roots, the front part of the words, and the endings, the end part of the words.

Gary's answer:

I thoroughly concur that you need to learn the endings very well; I'd even argue you need to learn the endings BETTER than the roots, because if you know the ending but not the root, you can always look up the root in the dictionary. Not knowing the ending makes it kinda hard; at the very least, there's a lot more manual searching through the dictionary.

Never let it be said that I encourage slacking, but a good tool for getting you out of brain freezes is Whitaker's Words, a free program you can use as a web page at

Both. Judging from the Oxford Latin Dictionary, it is more often used in a physical sense, but the "error in judgement" meaning is certainly there.

It also has the meaning of vacillating, wavering back and forth, in both physical and metaphorical senses, so it's really more being lost, wandering about all over the place, than heading determinedly down the wrong road.

Mary McClavey's answer:

Just to add a little, erro is also used as a noun (erro, erronis, masc) which is a truant.

Michael's answer:

In Cassell's you'll find two entries for "labor"

1 lAbor, lAbI, lapsus sum = "Deponent (Verb)" (that's what the "dep" means), translated by "glide, slide, fall down, slip" + more entries with related meanings. But note: it's a verb! (see cassell's p. viii in my edition - 1959)

2 (the next entry down), lAbor (labos: Plautus, Terence / that is to say that this word appears in the writings (plays) of those two authors in that form, id est {= that is to say} as labos with an 's' instead of an 'r', a phonological rule that you'll eventually learn -- het, skip this explanation, for now), labOris, m. (where m = masculine noun) = work, labo(ur), toil, effort + more meanings down the column.

Well, what does this mean?

Look at sentence 1 in Wheelock:

Labor me vocat.

"labor (= something? This is what we're trying to figure out.)
me = me
vocat = is calling me, is summoning me"

So we have X is calling me. Now what is that "X"? It has to be the subject of the sentence, because as it stands we have either:

1 X is calling me and (another verb, which has the meaning of "slipping") or
2 Work is calling me. (where labor is the noun)

If you are using Wheelock edition 6.0, it specifically states that "labor" in that context *is* a noun.

If you are using an earlier edition of Wheelock, it may not say so specifically. [Time out: I just checked Wheelock 5.0 where the same comment is made, i.e. "labor" is a noun. For earlier editions I don't know.]

Dictionaries contain all possible meanings of a word in its various forms. And that's what we want them to do. But as beginners, we are dealing with simple sentences with S+O+V [normal Latin word order] = subject, object, verb (usually, but not always) in that order.

Don't make things tough on yourself by making things more complex than they are *at this stage of your learning* Latin.

The editors are not trying to fool you. It's not a trick question. If they say "labor" in this sentence is a noun, take them at their word, and translate it as a noun.

Sometimes we are clever enough to create our own pitfalls.

However, no matter what questions you may have, or problems you may face, share them with us. We were once in your position. Or, at least, I was.

das is from dO, dare, dedI, datum.

It's a proverb; it means that help is more useful if it's provided promptly -- a maxim I try to adhere to with regard to WH2001 e-mail. :)