384 The Loom of Language
conceals the relation of dJferent parts of a verb when &e meet them on
the written page, adds to the difficulty of using a dictionary It is made
to preserve the rule that the Spanish C before / and E3 like the Spanish
Za stands for the TH sound in thin Thus both toque (I touched) and toco
(I touch) belong to the infinitive iocat> as listed in the dictionary The QU
reminds us that the hard K sound of the stem goes through all its deriva-
tives The most important of these spelling changes "are the following
(1) The letters C and G when to be pronounced hard befoie E and /3
are written QU and GU respectively* e g pagar (pay)* pago (I
pay)* pague (I paid)
(2) To indicate that G before A, O* U5 stands for the CH in Scots
loch, J is written instead* e g coger (gather)., cojo (I gather)
(3) Verbs ending in -cer or -cir, preceded by a consonant change C to Z
before A and O* e g veneer (vanquish);, venzo (I vanquish)
It is not possible to give the precise Anglo-American equivalent of
the various tense-forms listed in these tables without recourse to
roundabout expressions* and there are alternative compound tense-
forms corresponding to some of them Before discussing use of simple
tenses* we should therefore familiarize ourselves with the Romance
idiom appropriate to various situations in which we ourselves use the
helper verbs be and have This is a long story
AUXILIARY VERBS
Some Aryan languages have no possessive verb to have Russian has
not It is possible to sidetrack the possessive sense of to have by the use
of the verb to le with a possessive or with a preposition Thus a French-
man can say c*est a moi (Latin miln est} — this is mine (I possess this)
That the Latin verb habere is equivalent to our have is true in the sense
that both denote possession (e g hdbet duas villas = he has two farm-
houses) Latin authors occasionally used a past participle with habere,
as when Qcero says cogmtum habeo (I have recognized). In late Latin
habere was becoming a helper to express perfected action as in Teutonic
languages To say that the Latin verb eise corresponds with our verb
to be is also true in so far as both can
(a) denote existence as in the Cartesian catchphrase cogito ergo sum
(I thinka therefore I am),
(£>) act as a copula (link) between person or thing and a characteristic
of one or the other, as in leoferox est — the lion is fierce,
(c) indicate location^ as in Caesar in Gallia est = Caesar is in Gaul*
(d) state dais membership, as in argentwn metattum est = silver is a
metal.,
(e) go with the past participle in a passive construction such as ab
omnibus amatus est = he was loved by everyone*
(/) state pure identity 3 as Augustus imperator est = Augustus is the
emperor