In the seventeenth class of the Latin from Scratch course, we’ll study a new past tense: the pluperfect past indicative in the active voice (from now on, just pluperfect). It is a quite simple tense.
Contents
I explain everything in the following video ():
Morphology of the Latin pluperfect indicative
Contrary to English, Spanish, etc., in Latin the pluperfect is made up of only one word. All the conjugations work in the same way:
- perfect stem
- pluperfect indicative morpheme ĕrā
- active endings
The result is the following table:
| 1st conjugation | 2nd conjugation | 3rd conjugation | mixed conjugation | 4th conjugation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| amaveram amaveras amaverat amaveramus amaveratis amaverant | monueram monueras monuerat monueramus monueratis monuerant | duxeram duxeras duxerat duxeramus duxeratis duxerant | ceperam ceperas ceperat ceperamus ceperatis ceperant | audiveram audiveras audiverat audiveramus audiveratis audiverant |
Pluperfect of the verb sum
Even the verb sum is completely regular. You just need to remember that its perfect stem is fu‑.
fueram
fueras
fuerat
fueramus
fueratis
fuerant
Translation of the pluperfect tense into English
This tense corresponds to the English past perfect: amaveram → I had loved. Of course, it would be great if we actually understand what the Latin pluperfect and the English past perfect actually mean and how they differ from other past tenses such as imperfect, perfect, etc.
The pluperfect (Latin plusquamperfectum: more than perfect) means that the action was completed before another action in the past: it expresses anteriority with respect to the past.
This means that most of the times the pluperfect will appear very close to another past tense.
We’ll understand all of this even better with our next practice!