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So I did well in my Latin GCSE this year but we just learned that -o is first person, -s is second person, etc. But I had a closer look at the textbook today and it lists verbs in four conjugations types. Eg. porto is first, doceo is second, traho is third and audio is fourth.

Do I need to learn which type a verb is? How important is it?

Owl
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Yes.

For a simple example, "I will love" is amā-bō, while "I will hear" is audī-am. Why does one take -bō and the other take -am? It depends which conjugation they're in; 1 and 2 use -bō, while 3 and 4 use -am.

Once you get out of the "present system" (present, imperfect, future), things get even more complicated. You'll want to learn the four principal parts for each verb: a set of four specific forms that let you derive all the others. For "run", for example, these forms are currō, currere, cucurrī, cursus, and there's unfortunately no reliable way to derive any of those from any other—you simply have to know all four.

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Draconis
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  • Thanks! Useful answer. So it would matter if I wanted to compose Latin, but would it matter in terms of translation into English? – Owl Nov 25 '19 at 18:44
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    Although audī-am is a reasonable representation of the underlying structure, presenting the form that way might obscure the fact that the actual surface form scans with short i because of the rule of shortening vowels in hiatus. – Asteroides Nov 25 '19 at 18:55
  • @Asteroides Very true. – Draconis Nov 25 '19 at 19:58
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    @TomHahn Absolutely. For example, habet is present but curret is future (present would be currit); amat is indicative but dicat is subjunctive (indicative would be dicit). These distinctions are lost if you don't know the conjugations. – Draconis Nov 25 '19 at 20:01
  • @Draconis Thanks. One more thing, if you know the present form/infinitive can you tell which conjugation they are in, or do you just learn them with the new vocabulary? – Owl Nov 25 '19 at 21:39
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    @TomHahn The infinitive tells you the conjugation. (That's the main reason it's included as a principal part; the reason you need the first singular also is for an edge case involving the third conjugation.) – Draconis Nov 25 '19 at 21:44
  • @Draconis Great. Thanks so much! – Owl Nov 25 '19 at 21:45
  • You'll find you don't have to learn every form of every conjugation independently. For example, the present indicative of all conjugations has the same pattern, just with a change in vowel. And once you know the perfect stem (the third "principle part") forming the perfect (and the derived tenses) have identical endings for every verb. – Colin Fine Nov 25 '19 at 22:37
  • If you memorise infinitives, it is important to notice the length of the e before -re: short e (often written as ĕ) indicates a consonantal stem, while long e (often written as ē) indicates an e-stem. – Cerberus Nov 26 '19 at 03:00