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11 12 Intro to Latin
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Chapter 2 – Wheelock
Things you will know / understand by the end of this chapter:
Name the cases of a Latin noun and identify the basic uses or grammatical
functions of each case in a sentence.
Recognize and form the base of a 1st declension noun.
Form and translate first declension nouns and adjectives.
State the rules for adjective/noun agreement and verb/subject agreement.
Explain what is meant by noun and adjective gender.
Describe the usual positioning of an adjective.
Forms Summary:
1st Declension:
case:
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Ablative
Vocative
fama, famae
function:
(subject)
(possession)
(indirect object)
(direct object)
(object of a preposition)
(direct address)
singular:
fama
famae
famae
famam
fama
fama
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plural:
famae
famarum
famis
famas
famis
famae
words added:
of
to / for
11 12 Intro to Latin
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Chapter 2 Lesson, Part 1 - Noun Cases and Their Functions:
A noun is a person, place, thing or idea - which we know from English and a noun is the
same thing in Latin! (This is really too easy so far!) In English, nouns have different
functions: They can be subjects, can show possession, can be indirect objects, direct
objects and objects of prepositions and finally, can be used for directly addressing
someone or something. Guess what? It is the same in Latin.
All nouns have function, that is, each noun is doing something specific within the
sentence. For instance, in English, we know what the subject of a sentence is because it
is one of the first words in a sentence and generally comes before the verb (it is what
performs the action of the verb). Possession is generally shown by adding the ending ’s
(or just ’) to the end of a noun. Indirect objects often follow the verb and come before the
direct object. The direct object generally comes after the verb in a sentence (and receives
the action of the verb). The object of a prepositions follows a preposition. Direct address
is usually set off by commas and is more often than not at the beginning of a sentence.
We know what function (subject, direct object, etc.) each noun has in English by its
position in a sentence. Word order is critical in English.
Now here comes the tricky part! In fact, for some, the following is one of the most
difficult concepts to master in Latin, but once you get it down, you’ve got it made.
(Conversely, if you don’t get it down – well, your ship will probably go down instead!
So, pay close attention and ask as many questions as you need to get a full grasp of the
following concept.)
In Latin, we know the function (subject, direct object, etc.) of a noun by the ending
placed on the noun itself. Latin does have a general word order, but the word order is
not nearly as important as the ending on each noun. It is somewhat similar to English When you are sick and you need to get well, you look for someone with “Dr.” at the
beginning of his name. When you need to borrow some P.E. equipment at school, you
know you need to contact someone with “Coach” at the beginning of his name. And
when you see “Mrs.” in front of Kennedy then you know that I’m married. Dr., Coach,
and Mrs. before someone’s name tells you what that person’s function is. In Latin, we
put endings on our nouns to signify what each word is doing in the sentence.
I know this sounds a bit intimidating at first, but you will get used to it. The better
understanding that you have of English grammar the easier this will be for you.
However, even if you are rusty in this area, you will improve quite a bit after taking
Latin. That is one of the great benefits of taking Latin – you will become more proficient
in English! So, what are the different cases used for the various functions (subject, direct
object, etc.) of nouns? Here they are:
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11 12 Intro to Latin
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Chapter 2 Lesson (cont.)
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Ablative
Vocative
subject
possession
indirect object
direct object (and later on, object of preposition)
object of preposition
direct address
You do need to memorize the Latin names for the cases in order because we will be using
them a lot. I mean, we will be using them practically EVERY day. Here is a sentence
that can help you to memorize the order. Never Get Dates ACting ABnormal – Very
true! You must also memorize what function each case is used for. Just in case I haven’t
made it clear, I’ll restate it. It is imperative (in other words, a command) that you
memorize / know what the names of the cases are and what function each has.
Everything you do in Latin from this day forward will draw upon this and your success
depends on it. Here is a sentence with containing all of the cases:
Susan, Bob just gave Mrs. Kennedy’s book to Joe in the hall.
Susan (vocative / direct address), Bob (nominative / subject) just gave Mrs. Kennedy’s
(genitive / possession) book (accusative / direct object) to Joe (dative / indirect object) in
the hall (ablative / object of a preposition).
Part 2 – Recognize and form the base of a 1st declension noun
Now let’s look at the Latin nouns themselves. In this chapter, we will be learning 1st
declension nouns. (Recall that with verbs and their endings, we use the word
“conjugation”. With nouns and their endings, we use the word “declension”. Basically,
they both refer to the specific group a word belongs to, which set of endings are used and
how the endings are added onto that word.)
First declension nouns in your vocabulary look like this:
puella, puellae
and
porta, portae
Do you see what they have in common? The first form ends in “a” and the second form
ends in “ae”. When you see this combination “-a, -ae” it will always be a noun that
belongs to the first declension.
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11 12 Intro to Latin
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Chapter 2 Lesson (cont.)
Now, we need to find out what the endings are, but first we need a base to add them to.
To get the base with ALL nouns (that means there are no exceptions – cool, huh?!) you
remove the ending from the second word as it is listed in the vocabulary. The first
word listed in the vocabulary is the nominative form and the second form is the genitive
form. So we can say that the base is found by taking the ending off of the genitive form.
In first declension, this means removing or dropping the “ae” from the 2nd form, that is,
the genitive.
puella, puellae
Therefore, the base is PUELL.
Part 3: - Forming and translating 1st declension nouns & adjectives
Simple enough! But now comes the fun part … the endings! There are a lot of them
because not only are there 6 cases, but we need to have singular and plural. It is a lot to
swallow at first, but we will use them so much that you will get them down with time.
But, of course, you must make the effort to memorize them so that they come
naturally to you.
Here they (1st Declension Noun endings) are!
N
G
D
Ac
Ab
V
Singular
a
ae
ae
am
a
a
Plural
ae
arum
is
as
is
ae
The best way to memorize them is to do three things: 1) Look at them while 2) saying
them aloud and 3) write them out for practice. This is triple-strength memory. It is the
most efficient way to get anything memorized. Finally, you must do this several times a
day everyday for it to work well. My advice – put in the time now and you will have
much less worry and grief trying to cram it in later (which actually doesn’t qualify as
learning something anyway!) Give me your best effort – I know you can do it!
Now that you have the endings, let’s put it together:
Let’s take puella, puellae:
1. Remove “ae” from the 2nd form.
2. Write the base down 12 times.
3. Add the case endings.
N
G
D
Ac
Ab
V
puella
puellae
puellae
puellam
puella
puella
Chapter 2 - Page 4
puellae
puellarum
puellis
puellas
puellis
puellae
11 12 Intro to Latin
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Chapter 2 Lesson (cont.)
Now you know how to decline the word, but you’re bound to be wondering how to
translate it, right? First, an important point: In Latin, we do not use the articles “a, an,
the”. Spanish and French both use articles “el, la, le, etc.” There isn’t a need for them in
Latin, however, since they are understood. Isn’t Latin much more efficient?! When you
translate into English, you will need to remember to add “a, an, the” as needed so that it
makes good sense in English. For the nominative, accusative, ablative & vocative, you
translate the Latin word into English and add articles only as needed. For the genitive
however, you will need to add the word “of” (plus an article, if needed) and the
word. For the dative, you will need to add the word “to” or “for” (plus an article, if
needed) and the word.
Here is a summary in chart form:
N
G
D
Ac
Ab
V
(article*) + word
of + (article*) + word
to, for + (article*) + word
(article*) + word
(article*) + word
word
*Articles (a, an, the) are to be added to the English translation as needed to make sense.
Part 4 – Adjective / Noun Agreement & Subject / Verb Agreement
It is important at this point out that adjectives, which modify (or describe) nouns, must
agree with the nouns that they modify. Let’s look at the following sentence:
Successful Sam turned the failing business around.
Sam is the subject of the sentence and is therefore in the nominative case. Since
“successful” modifies or describes Sam, it must also be in the nominative. “Business” is
the direct object of the sentence and is therefore in the accusative case. Since “failing”
modifies business, then it must be put in the accusative case also. A further point, both
“Sam” and “business” are singular (that is, there is only one Sam and only one business)
so the adjectives that modify them must also be singular.
A very important concept to remember:
An adjective agrees with the noun it modifies (or describes) in three ways:
GENDER (masculine, feminine or neuter), CASE (nominative, genitive, etc.)
& NUMBER (singular or plural).
Chapter 2 - Page 5
11 12 Intro to Latin
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Chapter 2 Lesson (cont.)
While we are on the topic of agreement, let’s review (from chapter 1) and state the rule
for subject/verb agreement:
A verb agrees with its subject in number. The subject and the verb in any given
sentence must both be singular or they must both be plural. You cannot have a
singular subject with a plural verb (or vice-versa) – that would result in a disagreement.
(Since disagreements are unpleasant – let’s try to avoid them!)
The latter two (case & number) have just been explained, let’s move onto gender!
Part 5 – Gender of nouns and adjectives
Latin nouns, just like French and Spanish nouns, have gender. In the English language,
we are not used to having to deal with this. In everyday life though we do. The uniform
dress code is very gender dependant. You boys would not be caught dead wearing those
beautiful plaid skirts, would you?! Well, just as boys would object to having a skirt put
on them (we’re not in Scotland, laddies and lassies, are we?), nouns that are masculine
object to having feminine adjectives put on them and vice-versa. This means that we
must have feminine, masculine and neuter adjectives to go with feminine, masculine and
neuter nouns. Everything needs to match up just right. This should not be a totally new
concept to you since your French and Spanish classes no doubt have touched on this
concept already. The great thing about Latin is that this whole idea of gender and
agreement will become clearer to you and you will have a better understanding of your
other foreign language.
The next questions become “How do we tell which gender a noun is?” and “How do we
put adjectives into the three different genders?”
For now, we will focus mainly on feminine. First declension nouns are always
feminine, except when they denote an occupation. When 1st declension nouns denote
and occupation, they are masculine. In the English language way of thinking, we do
not see a door as being masculine, feminine or neuter – it’s just a dumb old door and
you’ve got to use it to get in or out of a room. You will have to adjust your way of
thinking while reading & writing Latin. The word for door in Latin is porta, portae and
belongs to the 1st declension and is not an occupation, therefore it is most definitely
feminine. Since Latin is the parent language of both French and Spanish, you will see
that many of the qualities of this language have been passed down to them. About
occupations, one of the vocabulary words for this chapter is nauta, nautae (sailor). Sailor
is the name of an occupation and is therefore masculine. There aren’t very many of these
and they are fairly easy to spot. The majority of 1st declension nouns are going to be
feminine, so when in doubt - go with the majority and you will be right a majority of the
time!
Chapter 2 - Page 6
11 12 Intro to Latin
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Chapter 2 Lesson (cont.)
Let’s talk about those adjectives. How do we make an adjective feminine, masculine or
neuter? In this chapter, we will only discuss how to make them feminine. (Ladies go
first, right? The masculine adjectives are left holding the door open and will enter in
chapter 3.)
It is really quite simple when you think about it. To make an adjective feminine, you just
put 1st declension, feminine endings on them! So, at least for now, adjectives will have
the same exact ending as the noun they modify has. If we want to say “a good gate” in
Latin, we will say “porta bona” in the nominative, “portae bonae” in the genitive and so
on.
Part 6 – Positioning of the Adjective
An adjective is usually placed after the noun it modifies. The thought behind this is that
the noun is much more important than the adjective. Knowing who is absent in a class is
much more important than knowing whether that person is tall or short. Sometimes
however, adjectives come first, especially when adjectives denote size or number, or
when the words “this” and “that” are used. Here is an example: You know you will have
a teacher for Math every year, right? So what is important to you in this case is: Will I
have THIS teacher or THAT teacher?
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11 12 Intro to Latin
# _____ Nomen: ____________________ Classis:
Chapter 2 STUDY GUIDE:
Know the forms on the title page which are explained in more detail in the lesson.
Know the names & functions of the cases
Memorize the endings for & be able to translate 1st declension
(See pages 2 – 6 of the lesson)
Know all the vocabulary from chapter 1 & 2. The words are listed on your dictionary
page for each chapter and you have made flashcards.
(Practice your flashcards 3 times every day: morning, afternoon, evening)
Learn from your mistakes:
Correct your quizzes and have me check over them if needed, especially if you failed
any. Spend extra memory time on the ones you missed.
Pay close attention to the translations A & B corrections in class – make sure you correct
your papers carefully. Ask questions about things you don’t understand during class.
Study them and figure out where you went wrong. I will base the test translations on
these.
Correct the vocabulary test and spend extra memory time on the ones you missed.
Ask questions about things you don’t understand during class. Study them and figure out
where you went wrong.
All of the VOCABULARY TESTS have the same basic format: I WILL GIVE
YOU THE LATIN WORD AND YOU WILL HAVE TO WRITE IN THE
ENGLISH DEFINITION. They are CUMULATIVE, meaning that there will
always be vocabulary from all previous chapters, as well as this one.
All of the FULL TESTS have the same basic format: VOCABULARY, FORMS
(NOUNS/ADJECTIVES & VERBS) & TRANSLATIONS. They are
CUMULATIVE, meaning that there will always be vocabulary, forms & etc. from
all previous chapters, as well as this one.
Chapter 2 – Page 8