(Intensive) Latin s20
Bates College
Short Term, '01

intro

cases

gender and number

formation

Just as the ending of a verbs indicate the verb's particular qualities (of person, number, tense, mood, and voice), the ending of a noun indicates its characteristics of gender, number and case. Just are grouped according to the characteristic pattern of their endings (conjugations), nouns are grouped according to the characteristic pattern of their endings (declensions).

The endings tell you the grammatical function of the noun in the sentence (subject, object, indirect object, etc.). Because nouns have unique endings for their functions, Latin sentences do not have a required word order (English requires word order because placement of a word in a sentence tells you much about the words grammatical function).

Latin does not have a definite ("the") or indefinite ("a/an") article. Thus, you will have to determine from the context whether to supply an article when you translate.

There are six Latin cases (but we'll concentrate on the five most important now). Each is associated with a unique ending and a distinct syntactic function (e.g., subject, object or indirect object).

Nominative - The nominative ending is used when the noun is the subject of a sentence or the predicate nominative

fëmina ambulat (femina, woman, is the subject of the verb ambulö)

fëmina est regina (femina, woman, is the predicate of the noun regina).

Genitive - The genitive ending is used to indicate possession or the dependency of one noun on another [English often uses the preposition "of" to indicate the genitive].

patria fëminae (the woman's homeland; the homeland of the woman)

timor aquae (fear of water [objective genitive])

urna pecuniae (jar of money

YOU WILL ALWAYS TRANSLATE A GENITIVE CASE "of" + the word
e.g. of the woman, of water, of money]

Dative - The dative ending is used to indicate a referential relationship between the subject and the word in the dative. The indirect object is the most common use of the dative.

Taedam fëminae dat (He gives the torch to the woman).

Taedam fëminae optat (He chooses a torch for the woman).

YOU WILL ALWAYS TRANSLATE A DATIVE CASE "to or for" + the word
e.g. to or for the woman]

Accusative - The accusative ending is used when the noun is the direct object of a verb or a preposition which takes the accustive.

Fëminam videt.

Fëmina in aquam ambuläbit.

Ablative - The ablative is used where English would use adverbs to describe how a verb is performed or the prepostions "from" "with" "in" and "by."

Cum fëminä ambulat.

Fëmina est in aquä.

Nauta fëminam taedä terret.

YOU WILL ALWAYS TRANSLATE AN ABLATIVE CASE "from, with, in, by" + the word
e.g. from, by, with, in the woman]

 The endings nouns use also indicate their gender and number. Latin nouns can be singular or plural in number (just as in English). Latin nouns, unlike English nouns, have gender. Each noun is either feminine, masculine or neuter. These gender categories are grammatical, not social. Thus, there is nothing inherent in the meaning of the noun which indicates its gender (e.g., the word for "fatherland," patria, is feminine).

When you memorize Latin nouns, you must memorize the gender of the noun as a vocabulary item. For example, when you memorize the noun for woman, you should use the following format:

fëmina, fëminae, f. - woman.

The first entry is the NFS of the word. The second is the GFS. The third indicates gender. The last is the English translation. If you memorize the nominitive, genitive and gender (plus the English meaning) of every word, you will be able to identify, declension, gender, number and case and hence to properly translate the word.

There are five declensions in Latin plus a few irregular nouns. Each declension has a unique ending in the genitive singular (which is why you must memorize the nominative and genitive, as well as the gender and meaning when you learn a noun).

In order to form a declension:
 
 

• drop the ending from the genitive singular of the noun (this gives you the stem)
• add the case endings for the declension; e.g. (first declension):

 

 

• NSF: a NPF: ae
• GSF: ae GPF: ärum
• DSF: ae GPF: ïs
• AccSF: am AccPF: äs
• AbSF: ä AbPF: ïs