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Lesson 1: Number and Case (nominative, accusative) - First Declension Nouns

 

CONCEPTS. Please read through this material. It's a bit difficult at first, since there are some new concepts you need to learn in Latin that are not part of English grammar (declensions, cases, gender, etc.). You also need to be sure you understand these basic concepts of English grammar before you begin: noun, adjective, singular and plural, verb, and subject and object.

 

Latin declensions.There are five noun/adjective declensions in Latin, referred to as the first, second, third, fourth and fifth declensions. The declensions are, essentially, the patterns of endings used for the nouns and adjectives. Think of it like this: you pour milk on cereal, but you pour ketchup on hamburgers. You do not want to pour milk on your hamburger or ketchup on your cereal! Cereal is a food declension, and hamburger is a different food declension: they require different "endings"! Every Latin noun and adjective belongs to a declension, and you must memorize the declension when you learn the Latin noun. You must know the declension of each noun so that you can add the correct endings to the noun when you use it in a sentence.

 

First declension. In this lesson, you will have nouns and adjectives from the first declension. The first declension nouns are characterized by the letter "a" - so if you want, you can think of the first declension as the "a" declension.

 

Nouns and gender. In addition to memorizing the declension of every noun, you must also memorize the gender of the noun. Each Latin noun is assigned a gender: feminine, masculine, or neuter. Most, but not all, of the first declension nouns are feminine in gender. Sometimes the gender of a noun is connected to its biological gender (puella, girl, is a feminine noun), but most nouns do not have any direct connection to biological gender (pecunia, money, is also a feminine noun).

 

Subject and verb. Every sentence has a subject, and every sentence has a verb. This rule applies to both English and to Latin. In some Latin sentences, however, the subject may be implied, but not directly stated. In other Latin sentences, the verb may be implied but not directly stated. This can be difficult at first for English speakers, since the grammar of English requires that the subject AND the verb be clearly stated in every sentence. This is not true for Latin! More often that not, a Latin sentence will omit either the subject or the verb, and you will need to be able to infer the missing part of the sentence from context.

 

Supplying the verb. Here's an example of a Latin proverb where the verb is implied but not directly stated: Roma aeterna, "Rome (is) eternal." If you translate that directly into English, "Rome eternal," it starts to sound like Tarzan speech! In Latin, however, Tarzan speech is normal speech! It is very common for a verb to be omitted this way from a Latin sentence. If the verb is not stated directly in a Latin sentence, you will have to supply the verb yourself, based on what makes sense in context.

 

Case. Whenever you use a noun or adjective in a Latin sentence, you must put the noun or adjective into the correct "case," based on the grammatical function of the word in the sentence. There are five cases (plus one quasi-case), based on the various grammatical roles that a word can play in a sentence. As you now know, every Latin sentence has to have a subject, and whenever a word is the subject of a sentence, it goes into the nominative case. It is also common for a verb to have a direct object, and the direct object goes in the accusative case. In this lesson, you will be focusing on the nominative case and the accusative case.

 

Nominative case. The nominative case of a sentence can only be used for the subject of the sentence, and for the predicate (a statement made about the subject that completes the sentence). If you see a nominative form in a sentence, it must be either the subject or the predicate.

 

Accusative case. The accusative case is used for several different reasons. It can indicate the direct object a verb. It can also be the object of a preposition. Most prepositions in Latin take the ablative case, which you will learn later, but some prepositions (ad, "to, towards," for example) take the accusative case. The most common use of the accusative case is as the direct object of the verb so, until you learn some Latin verbs (starting in Lesson 7), you will not have very many examples of the accusative case to practice with.

 

Number: singular and plural. In addition to making sure you have the word in the right case, you also have to make sure you have the right number for the word: singular or plural. Since English also has singular and plural forms for its nouns, you will find this easy to remember! If you have one "elephant" in English that is not the same as having many "elephants," obviously! Elephant is a singular noun in English, and elephants is a plural noun. Just like Latin, we use a word ending ("s") to indicate the number of the noun. In Latin, however, the word ending of the noun is used to indicate BOTH case AND number, and there are different singular and plural endings for each case (nominative singular, nominative plural, accusative singular, accusative plural, etc.).

 

Quick review: Declension, gender, case, number. When you are working with a Latin noun or adjective in a sentence, you need to be aware of the declension, gender, case and number... which is why Latin is sometimes called a "hard" language to learn. But remember, even the most stupid Roman spoke Latin with no problems at all - it's just different from English, rather than really being harder. Something that you must keep in mind at all times is this: the declension and gender of a noun NEVER change (you memorize that, or look it up in a dictionary), but the case and number of the noun ALWAYS change depending on how the word is used in a sentence (yes, you have to figure that out on your own!).

 

Latin word order. Finally, you need to know that in Latin, the word order is completely free. In other words, there are no rules that govern word order. Given all the other rules you have to learn in Latin (declensions! gender! case!), you would think that Latin students would rejoice in the freedom of Latin word order and the absence of word order rules. Unfortunately, because English has so many rules about word order, most English speakers go kind of bonkers when they are confronted by the freedom of Latin word order. It's kind of like being thrust into zero gravity! You cannot tell which way is up or which way is down. In other words: you cannot tell where the subject of the sentence is. In English, the word order rule tells you that the subject of the sentence comes before the verb, but there is no such rule to help you in Latin. Here's my advice about that: just let go and enjoy! You've all seen the astronauts in outer space totally enjoying zero gravity, just goofing around and zooming up, down, and sideways with delight. Latin word order is free, and there's not a darn thing you can do about it - so have fun with it!

 

Pronunciation. There are several different styles people use in the pronunciation of Latin. You can listen to the audio for the proverbs to learn some of the rules for pronunciation, and you can find some good advice at this webpage: Official Wheelock's Latin Website.

 

FORMS. Each noun has a "stem" to which the ending is added. Here are the endings for first declension nouns and adjectives in the nominative case (subject of the sentence) and in the accusative case (direct object of the sentence).

 

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	-a	-ae
Accusative	-am	-as

 

 Example:

 

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	fabula	fabulae
Accusative	fabulam	fabulas

 

LEARN AND PRACTICE. Here are some Study Tips to help you organize your work.

 

In these sentences, the only verb you will see is est, which means "is" and sunt, which measn "are."  Remember: if the verb is not supplied, you will have to supply it yourself!

 

Group 1 (click on the link to see English translation and comments, and to listen to the audio where available)

 

NOTE: To help you get started, I've put a || to indicate the break between subject and predicate when the word order is a bit confusing. Also, I've given you an alphabetical word list to help you look up the words in the dictionary.

 

Word List:  [Note that the adjectives are found in the dictionary with the -us ending. You will learn why that is in a later lesson.]

aeternus, avaritia, belua, caecus, fera, fortuna, invidia, ita [adverb], longus, plenus, potentia, Roma, rotundus, scientia, si [conjunction], vagus, varius, vita, vitreus

 

1. Scientia || potentia.

 

2. Fortuna || caeca est.

 

3. Fortuna est rotunda.

 

4. Vaga est fortuna.

 

5. Vitrea est fortuna.

 

6. Varia || vita est.

 

7. Ita vita.

 

8. Longa est vita, si plena est.

 

9. Roma aeterna.

 

10. Caeca || invidia est.

 

11. Belua fera est avaritia.

 

Group 2 (click on the link to see English translation and comments, and to listen to the audio where available)

 

Word List: 

amicitia, antiquus, aqua, eloquentia, fabula, fama, innocentia, medicina, non [adverb], optimus, profundus, publicus, quietus, sagitta, sed [conjunction], semper [adverb], sempiternus, temperantia, tritus, tutus, ubique [adverb], vanus, verus, via

 

12. Via trita || via tuta.

 

13. Via antiqua || via est tuta.

 

14. Innocentia || ubique tuta.

 

15. Innocentia || eloquentia.

 

16. Eloquentia || sagitta.

 

17. Fabula, sed vera.

 

18. Publica fama || non semper vana.

 

19. Aqua profunda || est quieta.

 

20. Optima medicina || temperantia est.

 

21. Verae amicitiae || sempiternae sunt.

 

From Group 3 (click on the link to see English translation and comments, and to listen to the audio where available)

 

Word List:

ad [preposition], ancilla, arduus, bonus, divitiae [found only in the plural], domina, gloria, palma, per [preposition], pessimus, post [preposition], spina, via

 

22. Ardua || ad gloriam via.

 

23. Ad gloriam per spinas.

 

24. Post spinas || palma.

 

36. Divitiae || bona ancilla, pessima domina.