2162: Deponent Verbs Nov 15, 2020

Latin, a language whose grammar is notoriously simple to learn (...) has passive-voice deponents: verbs which are passive in form but active in meaning. For instance, the normal active ending for 1st person singular is -o (present tense) or -āvī (perfect aspect) but these do not exist for verbs like 'loquī' (to speak), 'verērī' (to fear), or 'blandīrī' (to flatter) and so on. In these cases, it would look like:

'loquor' (I speak) or 'hortātus sum' (I have exhorted) which would normally indicate the passive. These verbs have lost their active forms to history, and so given there is only one form, there is no way to use them to indicate the passive; one would need to opt for a synonym. It is not the only one to feature these verbs of course, but the list of these others is not too long either, including North Germanic languages like Danish, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit.