Latin Verb Conjugator
Victor Lan
This document describes the initial version of the program. Please refer to the file 'history' for features added in later versions.
I was a student at the University of Waterloo studying Latin by correspondence. As the number of verbs and the possible ways of conjugating them kept on growing, I thought it'd be useful to have something to help me practice conjugating them. This program was the result. I hope that you will find it useful.
This program tests the user his or her knowledge of Latin verb conjugation. It randomly selects a verb and asks the user to conjugate it to the specified combination of voice (active or passive), mood (indicative or subjunctive), tense and person. In the initial version, features are quite limited and the user interface a bit crude. Currently the program does not work with irregular verbs.
Download the latin.zip file to a temporary location. Extract the contents by clicking on the saved file (you'll need WinZip to do that) to a permanent location (for example, c:\conjugator). Open a Windows DOS prompt, then type "cd <location>" (for example, "cd \conjugator"), then "latin.exe".
The program looks for a data file named latin.dat in the current directory. This file contains information about verbs. It currently contains five regular model verbs laudare, monere, ducere, audire and capere, and five deponent verbs hortor, fateor, sequor, molior, and patior. To add more verbs, simply edit the file, following the format:
[conjugation] [1st person singular] [infinitive] [perfect stem] [perfect passive participle]
The only special point to note is that 3rd conjugation i-stem verbs (eg. capere) should be specified as conjugation 5. The file should end with a dollar sign '$' on a line by itself.
When the program starts, it asks for the number of verbs that the user would like to be tested on. After conjugating each verb, the score is updated on the bottom line of the screen. If the answer is incorrect, the computer will give the correct conjugated verb, again on the bottom line.
Thank you for your interest in this program. Feel free to email me any comments and feedback; they will be greatly appreciated.