Latin · Chapter 10 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer
Gerunds and gerundives
Ars amandi, the art of loving; Carthago delenda est, Carthage must be destroyed. The verbal nouns and adjectives behind half the Latin still quoted at you.
The short version
Carthago delenda est, and who must do it goes in the dative
The gerundive is a passive verbal adjective meaning needing to be done, and its headline use is obligation: gerundive plus a form of sum. Carthago delenda est, Carthage must be destroyed. When you name the person who has to do it, that person takes the dative rather than ab, which is the detail everybody forgets. With an intransitive verb the whole thing goes impersonal and neuter: mihi scribendum est, I must write.
Mihi liber legendus est.
Agreement tells a gerund from a gerundive
Both are built on the stem plus -nd-, and when reading, the test is one question: is it agreeing with anything? A form in -ndum with no noun to match is a gerund, a verbal noun with no nominative because the infinitive already covers that job: ars amandi, ad audiendum, legendo. A form matching a noun in gender, number and case is a gerundive. And where you would expect a gerund with an object, Latin usually flips it.
ars amandi; ad urbem capiendam
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