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Hi, strong perfects for "cognoscere" exist in Italian (io conóbbi, tu conoscésti, etc...) in Romanian (cunoscúi, cunoscúși, etc...), French (je connus, tu connus, etc...), Catalan (coneguí, conegueres, etc...). They are missing in Spanish and Portuguese. In italian "conobbero" is accented on the second "o" with an acute, indicating that the "o" is short or in IPA [ko'nob:ero]. Yes, perfects are still used in all romance languages to indicate a single action completed in the past. A simple way to determine which past tense to use is determiming if the sentence can use a progressive tense. I.E. "Caesar landed in Britannia in 53 B.C." (use the perfect tense: the action is unique and is completed), versus: "Caesar was landing in Brittania, when... (use the imperfect tense: the action was incomplete and probably followed by an action in the perfect tense) ...the Britons attacked the ships from the shore." Hope it helps. Bruno --- In romconlang@yahoogroups.com, "thomasruhm" <thomas@...> wrote: > > This is what was written in the famous Introduction to Vulgar Latin by Charles Grandgent about the pronunciation of strong latin perfect. The head-word goes "b. STRONG PERFECTS." > > "428. The -ui type, according to Meyer-Lübke, Gram. II, 358, includet from the start not only perfects of the placui sort, but also all perfects in -vi not made from the verb-stem (cf. § 422), - such as cognôvi, crêvi, môvi, pâvi, - this ending being pronounced wui, but written vi to avoid the doubling of the v. At any rate, the development of the vi indicates that it was sounded wui, wwi, or Bwi in Vulgar latin: cf. It. conobbi, crebbi, etc.; Pr. moc, etc." > > I could not use all the signs in the quote. > > Do you think that he was right? I like it, but it could also be a case like 'dâma' and 'damma' or 'lîtera' and 'littera'. > > Are perfects like that often used in romlangs? I am not so far with the grammar yet, but I got declensions similar to latin ones for personal names and kinship terms and vulgar latin for things. >