Discuss “Formation of the Perfect Stems: Why are they so unusual?” by our very own Benissimus!
Introduction:
When Latin students first encounter the perfect tense, the number of principal parts for verbs suddenly doubles. To add to this complication, these new parts appear to be formed at random… or are they? This tutorial is designed to explain why Latin developed these irregular verbal parts and hopefully to attune the reader to how verbs, and even words in general, are formed.
Read the entire tutorial here:
http://www.textkit.com/tutorials/20030923-perfect-stems-page1.php?aid=3&tid=3
Did I write that? 
Hmm… must’ve been your evil twin…
Your evil identical twin that is. Good job benissimus, it was very straightforward! (as in clearly written not as in I understand everything you said right now)
I especially like the way you gave words to practice on at the end.
I want to express my thanks to benissimus for the tutorial as it has gone a long way in helping me with the perfect stems.
And I enthusiastically second those thanks.
Who knows? You may have saved me from having a panic attack when I bumped into those formations later on in Latin!
Thanks, Benissimus.
I’m currently busy with greek, but someday I’ll be indebted to benissimi tutorialo. Ergo [size=18=12]εὐξαριστῶ
I found it very helpful. I used to think, “How in the heck did they come up with that stem? And how am I going to remember all this??” But Beniss’ explanation clears some of this, and it will help in remembering what the Perfect Stems are or at least allow me to make an educated guess about a stem if I don’t remember it.