If fimus and fitis are not used in good prose, what do you use instead? And what on earth is wrong with fimus and fitis anyway?
Also, while I’m here, what is the passive infinitive of esse to eat. Is it edi?
Add to this that fis is found only in Horace. I would be speculating if I tried to explain the lack of the second person. It is a fact this verb is usually used in the infinitive and 3rd person. To get around this, you can restructure a sentence to be active or use fit ut…:
fit enim nescio qui ut quasi coram adesse uideare Cic. Fam. 15.16.I
Also, while I’m here, what is the passive infinitive of > esse > > to eat> . Is it > edi> ?
OLD lists the passive infinitive as edi.
yes the fact that the present indicative of fio is defective can be problematic. fimus and fitis are not found in Classical Latin at all, that is the language we are all striving to master. fis is not found in prose, occurring only twice in Latin and both times in Horace. for possible replacements exsisto can serve as a copula, as can exorior. in an absolute sense euado can work. i do wonder, however, how many times one would say ‘we/you are becoming X’ or even generally ‘we/you become X’. if X happens to be an adjective, ingressive verbs in -esco are of great help.
as for the passive of edo, estur and editur are found along with essetur once (in Varro) for ederetur. the passive infinitive is edi, which is found in Celsus.
~D
apologies for posting some of what B had already said. I began on fio, took a shower, then found out where on earth OLD meant edi to be (for which they were no help!).
~D