Verb Form Vault: forms from three blocks
About this app
Three wheels on a vault door show stem, sign and ending: build forms of thirteen verbs, crack eighteen forms from Seneca and Ovid and parse them in the sentence, and sort out ten confusions.
With explain mode: an AI tutor walks you through the app, points out what matters in the scene and answers your questions.
A form consists of a few building blocks
A Latin verb form can be split into three parts. The stem names the verb and shows the present or the perfect system. The sign in the middle shows tense and mood, for example ba for the imperfect, or it is a linking vowel. The ending gives person, number and voice. Reading the form from the back leads quickly to the parsing. Some forms have two analyses, and then the sentence decides. The division follows school grammar and is no historical analysis.
What the app shows
The door of a 3D vault carries three wheels for stem, sign and ending. The form appears in the reading line, and above it stand the form and its parsing. If the wheels give no form, the lamps go out and the app names the endings that fit. A counter shows how many forms come from how few blocks. When you change the verb only the stem wheel turns; signs and endings stay. Thirteen verbs from all conjugations are coded by hand, including the exceptions esse, ire and ferre. The perfect passive, imperatives and infinitives are left out.
What you can try
In Build mode you turn the wheels or tap a cell of the table. In Crack mode you set eighteen forms from real passages in Seneca and Ovid and parse them in the sentence, and then the vault opens. Traps mode shows ten confusions: amabit and amabat, reget and regit, leges as verb or noun, legit and lēgit, amaverit and amaverat. Each trap comes with a reason, and some look-alikes can be compared in their own passage.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you parse a Latin verb form?
- Read the form from the back. The ending gives person, number and voice, the sign before it tense and mood, the stem the verb. Then check the result in the sentence, because some forms have two analyses.
- How do you tell future from present in the consonant conjugation?
- By the vowel before the ending: reg-i-t is present, reg-e-t is future. The consonant conjugation has no bi. The first person singular regam can be future or present subjunctive, and then the sentence decides.
- How do you recognise the perfect subjunctive?
- By the sign eri after the perfect stem, as in rexerit. The forms match the future perfect except in the first person singular: rexerim is perfect subjunctive, rexero future perfect. So the sentence often decides.
- What can I do in the Verb Form Vault app?
- You build forms of thirteen verbs on three wheels, crack eighteen forms from Seneca and Ovid by setting and parsing them, and sort out ten typical confusions.
Subject: Latin
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