First Project (First Iteration)

NOTE: Major error in the dictionary -- plural forms identified as singular.  (12/30/17, 8:10 PM)

This is the first version of my first project.  The overall goal would be to create a fully functional application that can parse any Latin verb the user enters.  This represents my first baby steps towards that goal.  Here is the code:

stems = {
"o" : "first person singular",
"as" : "second person singular",
"at" : "third person singular",
"amus" : "first person singular",
"atis" : "second person singular",
"ant" : "third person singular",
} 

def parse(verb):
    stem = verb[len("am"):]
    try:
        return(stems[stem])
    except:
        print("Verb form not found.") 

while True:
    entry = input("Enter a Latin verb: ")
    if parse(entry) != None:
        print(parse(entry))

Right now, the parser has pretty severe limitations.  It will only parse singular present active indicative forms of the verb "amo".  I've set up a dictionary to recognize all of those forms.

The main idea for the app is to take the user entry, split it into root and stem, then search for the entry corresponding to that stem in the dictionary.  One question for the final form would be whether I would want to make the dictionary sensitive to different roots or just focus on stems.  Probably if the app can just find the stem, it doesn't have to know anything about the root.  If it finds no stem, it will return an error.

Since there are several forms of conjugation in Latin (e.g. first conjugation, second conjugation), I might want to consider whether to have separate dictionary for each conjugation, where the app is able to determine which conjugation to look in.

Sometimes the conjugation is ambiguous -- in that case, I would want to be able to program the app to print all relevant entries.

How does the app work right now?  First, the user enters something, hopefully a form of the verb "amo."  The app calls a function, parse(), using the entry as its argument.  It pretty much assumes that it is looking for the stem of the verb "amo" -- I did this by having it define stem as everything from the end of that root (from string position 3, in other words).  It then uses stem as a key to look up the verb form in the dictionary.  If it finds the verb form, it returns the entry -- otherwise, it alerts the user that nothing was found.