What is the perfect tense?

In English....

• In English, we use the perfect tense to describe completed actions in the past.

• Lots of perfect tense verbs in English end in -ed e.g walked, played, jumped

• However there are also lots of irregulars - went, sang, met

e.g If a verb ends in 't' then he/she/it is doing it.
If a verb ends in 'nt' then they are doing it.

Verbs change their endings in Latin depending on who is doing the verb and we need to pay careful attention to this when translating.

verbs in latin

perfect tense

perfect tense

How do I find the perfect tense?

In Latin, verbs are listed in a dictionary as principal parts:







To find the perfect stem, look at the third version of the verb in the dictionary and keep all the letters the same before the 'i'. That is your stem, then you can add 'i', 'isti', 'it' etc