Latin Reference — Vol. VII: The Verb Workshop

How Latin says trying, repeatedly and used to. This volume began with a Duolingo weasel: Mustela murem pinguem captat — a weasel tries to grab the fat mouse. Where does "tries to" come from? The answer splits into the two great ways a language can modify a verb, and ends with a tense you'll meet again in Spanish.

Derivation vs inflection — the two workshops

English mostly derives with particles (grab → grab at) and inflects with endings or auxiliaries (speaks → was speaking). Latin does both with endings — which is why the two are worth keeping distinct in your head.

Frequentatives — verbs built for effort and repetition

Latin had a production line: take a verb's past stem and bolt first-conjugation endings on. The result — a frequentative — means doing the base action repeatedly, energetically, or at something without necessarily landing it.

Frequentatives were the energetic, colloquial choice — and being first conjugation, beautifully regular. Several elbowed their parent verb out entirely: Romance languages sing with cantāre's children, not canere's.

Aside — chase and catch. Captāre reached English twice, through two different dialects of medieval French: central French gave chase, Norman French gave catch. One Latin verb, split into the pursuit and the prize. The weasel's whole drama — trying to grab — is fossilised in that doublet: chase is captāre still trying.

Aside — hablar. Spanish hablar (to speak) descends from fābulārī — to chat, spin tales, from fābula. Etymologically, Spanish speakers tell stories every time they open their mouths.

The conative shading — "trying to" without a new verb

Latin's ordinary tenses can also imply attempt from context alone — grammarians call this the conative use (from cōnārī, to try). It clings especially to the imperfect:

Flūmen trānsībat. — He was crossing the river — or, in context, he was trying to cross.

The tense paints the action as underway and incomplete; whether it ever succeeded is left open. No special form — just the imperfect doing what it does.

The imperfect tense — was, used to, kept on

The third great tense after present (Vol. IV) and perfect (Vol. V). Where the perfect reports a completed event (vīxit — she lived, full stop), the imperfect paints ongoing, habitual or background action in the past. The signature is -bā- wedged between stem and the familiar person endings.

Notes: the person endings are Vol. IV's old friends (-m, -s, -t, -mus, -tis, -nt); third conjugation borrows an -ē- (regēbam); fourth runs -iē- (audiēbam). Translate flexibly: amābat = he loved / was loving / used to love / kept loving — English needs four phrasings for what Latin does in one ending.

And sum, irregular as ever but tidy here:

Aside — the Spanish inheritance. Latin amābat → Spanish amaba. Latin -āba- is sitting inside hablaba essentially unchanged after two thousand years; the Spanish imperfect is the Latin imperfect, weathered smooth. The same aspect distinction survives too: imperfect hablaba (was speaking, used to speak) against preterite hablé (spoke, done) mirrors Latin imperfect vs perfect almost exactly. If you've ever drilled that Spanish contrast, you already own this tense.

The weasel, parsed in full

Mustela murem pinguem captat.

Every volume so far is in that one cartoon sentence: a declined noun, a third-declension adjective agreeing across the board, and a verb whose very construction carries the trying.

Worked sentences

The drill

Take Vol. IV's present-tense sentences and push each into the past twice: once as imperfect (vidēbat — was seeing), once as perfect (vīdit — saw, done). Saying both aloud for the same sentence is the fastest way to feel the aspect difference — and it's the exact muscle Spanish hablaba/hablé trains, if you ever want a second workout.