Fi?, fierī, factus sum: a question and translation help

Latin Learning Latin
1

Salvete, amicī!

I’ve got a question for you guys. I’m working on an English to Latin exercise and, lo and behold, the first sentence gave me guff.

Here’s the English:

I have been elected consul by the votes of the Roman people.

And my Latin:

Consul ? suffragiīs popul?rum Roman?rum factus sum.

This is my first contact with deponent or semi-deponent verbs (or whatever this is) in Latin, and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. It seems as though the English sentence is calling for a passive verb. Is fi? simply active in form but passive in meaning? Does it naturally just have the sense of “be made/elected”?

Is factus sum the correct form? It looks like a perfect and a passive… but it seems as though this is a particularly tricky verb, and one can never be too sure.

Your help would be greatly appreciated!

Valete!
Rufus

2

You are correct. Fio indeed has a passive meaning with an active construction, being a passive equivalent of “facio” (you do not say facior, you just use fio). However, wen reaching the perfect tenses you go back to facio and use factus sum, proving its semi-deponentness.

3

English “seem” is also such a verb, active in construction, passive in meaning.