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Everything you need to know about Ecce Rōmānī Chapter VII
There are really only two topics covered in this chapter:
I.
II.
A formal presentation of the different case-endings we have learned so far: the Nominative and Accusative
cases, in both the Singular and Plural forms, of the first 3 declensions.
How to use the information that these endings (and the endings of verbs) give you in order to “decipher” the
meaning of a sentence.
Case-endings are the letters we put on the end of a noun or adjective in order to indicate what it is doing in the sentence,
and how it relates to the other words in the sentence. We have only learned two of these so far:
Nominative: if a noun or adjective is in the Nominative case, then we know that it is the subject of the sentence (or
the complement, which amounts to the same thing, since this is simply describing the subject).
The magister is eating a pie.
In this English sentence, “the magister” is the subject. If it were in Latin, it would be put into the
Nominative case.
The magisters are eating a pie.
Same deal, except now there is more than one magister, so we put the noun into the Nominative
plural.
The magister and the magistra are eating a pie.
Slightly different, but same idea: there is more than one subject, but they must be named
separately, each in the Nominative case.
Magister crustum edit.
Magistrī crustum edunt.
Magister et magistra crustum edunt.
Accusative: if a noun or adjective is in the accusative case, we have a few more options for what it might be doing
in the sentence, but your first response should be to regard it as the direct object of the sentence—the thing that the verb is
affecting.
The magister is eating a pie.
Here, “a pie” is the direct object, and would thus be in the Accusative case in Latin.
The magister is eating pies.
The only difference here is that we would need the Accusative plural form, because there is more
than one direct object.
So how do we indicate the case of a noun or adjective? It’s easy—we just need to know which declension it belongs to,
because this tells us which endings to use.
The 1st declension is that category of nouns that use these endings:
Nominative
Accusative
Singular
-a
-am
Plural
-ae
-ās
Singular
-us [sometimes –r]
-um
Plural
-ī
-ōs
Singular
? [it could be many things]
-em
Plural
-ēs
-ēs
The 2nd declension uses these:
Nominative
Accusative
And the 3rd declension:
Nominative
Accusative
The adjectives we have learned so far use both the 1st and 2nd declension endings, depending on the gender of the noun
they are describing.
Nominative (m/f)
Accusative (m/f)
Singular (m/f)
-us/-a
-um/-am
Plural (m/f)
-ī/-ae
-ōs/-ās
By learning to recognize these endings, you can usually tell instantly what a word is doing in a sentence. However, since
some forms (like the 3rd declension Nominative and Accusative plural [-ēs]) are identical, you will occasionally need to
look at other parts of the sentence to be sure, or just use common sense. Try these sentences:
Puella arborēs videt.
Although arborēs could be either Nominative or Accusative case, puella is Nominative, so it must be the subject. The
fact that videt indicates a singular subject (and arborēs is plural), and that trees don’t have eyes, confirm this.
Patrem meum clāmōrēs terrent.
Again, clāmōrēs could be subject or object, but two factors tell us which it must be: Patrem meum is Accusative, so it
cannot be a subject, and terrent ends with –nt, indicating more than one subject.
The best thing you can do at this point is memorize the endings according to category (1 st
decl.: -a, -am; -ae, -ās, etc.), so that you can recognize them, and we can add new caseendings to these categories as we learn them.