Latin · Chapter 1 · Lesson 12 · Grammar primer
Verb endings: why amo is a whole sentence
A Latin verb carries its own subject, which is why the pronoun is usually absent. Six endings cover every tense in the language.
The short version
Six endings name the subject, so drop the pronoun
A Latin verb ends with a syllable saying who is acting: -o for I, -s for you, -t for he or she, -mus for we, -tis for you plural, -nt for they. That is why amo is a complete sentence meaning I love. Those six run through essentially every tense in the language with only small adjustments, which makes this the highest-return table in Latin.
dico, dicis, dicit
A pronoun that IS there is doing emphasis
Ego, tu and nos all exist, and a Roman used them for contrast rather than for basic information. Ego dico, tu taces means I am the one speaking and you are the one keeping quiet. Dropping pronouns in by default is the clearest tell of a beginner's Latin: if you would not stress the word in English, leave it out. Spanish and Italian inherited exactly this behaviour.
Ego dico, tu taces.
The conjugations change the vowel, not the endings
Latin verbs come in four families and beginners hear that as four times the work. It is not. The difference between them is the vowel before the ending, while -t and -mus and -nt are identical across all four. Even sum, the irregular one you meet first, is irregular only in its stem: the plural is su-mus, es-tis, su-nt, with the regular endings intact.
amat, habet, dicit, audit
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