Latin, Lesson 3-Future

Future I, Active

Future active is a tense which, unsurprisingly, refers to something which has not yet happened. The endings are fairly basic, and follow fairly regular rules - however, the future endings used in 1st and 2nd conjugation differ from the endings of 3rd, 3rd-io (not a typo!), and 4th.

For example - "amo, amare" (1st conjugation) would be

*1st person singular and 3rd person plural use bo and bunt, not bi.
Note the B and the BIs - the distinguishing feature of future tense in Latin.

With "venio, venire" (4th conjugation--io), however, the endings are different. In future, this is what they look like:

[deleted paragraphs go here. deleted to maintain rigorous accuracy, which we will go back to striving for.)

To clarify: venire, venio.. we know it is 4th conjugation verb and if we look at its first person singular conjugation, we see that it is an io verb, because the conjugation of the first person singular is "venio". (an io category exists within 3rd and fourth conjugations and is a more general concept which we will briefly introduce here by using venire, venio as an example).

Let's first identify what we know.

We know it is 4th conjugation -io because it ends in ire, which tells us that it is 4th conjugation, and io because its nominative singular ends in io (venio). Because it is io, we leave the i in. So, when we are asked (as all textbooks should phrase these new questions):

1. What are the steps to form the future 2nd person conjugation?

We say:

1. It is better to know more than you need: check the infinitive nominative singular, we now know that it is 4th conjugation io.
2. We now know that we can form the stem: the stem is veni and can then add a personal ending--leaving in the i. We leave in the i because it is io. Because it looks weird, we never leave the i in the future perfect.

What is the form for venire, in the future tense, in the 2nd person?

The answer is venies.

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