According to my dictionary, the English phrase ‘it is getting dark’ in Latin is
advesperāscit (from advesperāscere, -vit)
I have not started learning 3rd conjugation verbs yet, but this looks like one. The questions I had were:
The entry in the dictionary was not listed in the 4-prinipal parts format I’ve seen so far. I know some verbs do not have all four prinicpal parts so that’s ok, but now I am not sure what the -vit ending means.
If advesperāscit is present, would advesperāscibat mean ‘it was getting dark’?
It’s an impersonal verb (just means it has no real subject, kind of like ‘it is raining’: what is the ‘it’? Nothing really), so generally you’ll only be able to use it in 3rd person (just like English: you shouldn’t say ‘I am raining’, at least not in ordinary speech).
That’s why they give you only the third person in the dictionary:
advesperasc-it (advesperasc-o, advesperac-is, etc) [first principle part]
advesperasc-ere [2nd]
advesper-av-it [3d principle part is often different from the first, so you’d have advesperav-it, advesperav-erat (pluprfct), advesperav-erit (fut. perf), etc]
– [It has no 4th principle part, lots of verbs don’t]
It means literally ‘it is beginning to get dark’ (that part of the little book I’m writing, which has an appendix on word formation, stuck!)
The imperfect tense is advesperasc-ebat. Though I’m not sure if impersonals have imperfect tenses (haven’t studied them yet, so it’s a case of the blind leading the blind! ). But I don’t see why they shouldn’t.
Thanks for the explanation. So the short -i- becomes an a long -e- in the imperfect:
advesparāscēbat (and NOT advesparāscibat)
Is this a characterisitic of the 3rd conjugation (the short -i- to long -e-)? I haven’t done that with 1st or 2nd conjugation verbs. Hope I am not already perpetuating an error in my verbs.
If the literal meaning in Latin is ‘it is beginning to get dark’, but is translated into English as ‘it is getting dark’, how would one translate the English sentence ‘It is beginning to get dark’? It would seem that
so, vid-ēre becomes vid-ēbam, vid-ēbās, vid-ēbat, etc.
flu-ere (regular conjugation III) becomes flu-ēbam, flu-ēbās, flu-ēbat, etc.
fac-ere (an -io verb of conj. III) becomes fac-iēbam, fac-iēbās, fac-iēbat, etc.
If you like I can send you the indicative terminations in Word format via email. They get easier with time
Actually now I’m writing out all of my conjugation and declension tables 200 times each because of this site, which did not convince me on its own (he speaks of Wheelock being worthless; I don’t think he’s worthless, at all, and I think the site is too disparaging of poor posthumous Wheelock), but Lucus Eques really convinced me to get a copy of Lingua Latina and follow this method. Lingua teaches Latin in Latin, which is amazing, and at least from what I’ve seen of the sample pages, as well as what Lucus says, it does this very gently. sept. 12 is the estimated date the book should get here.
Go here for additional exercises even if your not learning Latin through Wheelock. It’s a really great site that helps you get the hang of things. The exercises are under ‘Latin Praxis’.
As for how to say ‘it is getting dark’ in Latin, I think advesperascit would do; according to A&G, ‘beginning to’ is just where it comes from, not what it actually means. But this sort of thing gets into the subtleties of the Latin language, and I’m still an ogre trying to get his conjugations straight!
Yes, third conjugation is the oddest one of the four. Whereas 1st conj has the A theme, 2nd conj has the E theme, and 4th conj has the long I theme, 3rd conj originally used an intermediate vowel which shows up as short i and u mostly, and forms the future and imperfect with a long e, and wait till you see how it forms the perfect! Not knowing how to conjugate a 3rd conj verb is hardly a sign that you are at fault, considering that you haven’t learned that conjugation yet.
). But I don’t see why they shouldn’t.