• Latin verbs are divided into four groups called conjugations. 
• Each conjugation is denoted by a particular vowel, called a stem-vowel, which helps to create the correct form of the verb (the first person singular is the exception to this.)
• We will be looking at First Conjugation verbs in this lesson, and the vowel for this group is ‘a’ – that should be easy to remember as ‘a’ is the first letter of the alphabet.

Now that we know the personal pronoun endings and the correct stem-vowel, we have to find the verb stem. In most Latin vocabularies, verbs are given in the infinitive form. The infinitive form means, ‘to do’ something, e.g. judicare is an infinitive, meaning ‘to judge’.

To find the stem, we drop the -re, leaving us with judica-.

If we want to write ‘he judges’, we add the ending ‘t’ to judica which gives us judicat. If we want to write ‘we judge’, we add the ending ‘mus’ which gives us judicamus, and so on with all the personal pronoun endings.

Here is the entire present tense form of judicare, to judge, with its English translation below:

Person	Singular	Plural
1	judico	judicamus
2	judicas	judicatis
3	judicat	judicant

Person	Singular	Plural
1	I judge	we judge
2	thou judgest	you judge
3	he/she/it judges	they judge

For more information, watch the Forming Latin verbs video.