Latin

Latin is an Indo-European language which was influenced by Ancient Greek and Etruscan, amongst others. Spoken in Ancient Rome, and closely related to a number of other ancient Italic languages such as Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan and Venetic, it eventually evolved into the Romance languages spoken today.

Table of Contents

1. Nouns
2. First Declension
3. second declension
   1. masculine
   2. neuter
   3. R nouns

Grammar

Latin grammar is the root of nearly all Romance languages. Many constructions in Romance languages remain virtually unchanged from their Latin counterparts. For instance, the ending of verbs determines the person (first, second, or third) and the number (singular or plural), and nouns and adjectives possess genders.

Usually, the basic word order is loosely based on "Subject Object Verb", similar to Spanish or even Japanese. However, this is not a universal rule. Unlike English, in which sentences derive much of their meaning from the order in which the words are placed, Latin sentences can be scrambled to some degree and still make sense. The endings of the nouns and the verbs tell the word's function in a sentence. (See Nouns and verbs).

Verbs are conjugated but there are no such things as "helper (auxiliary) verbs" as there are in English, such as "had" in the sentence "I had eaten", only different endings for each tense/person/mood/etc. The essential active endings are:

• 1st person singular: o OR m
• 2nd person singular: s
• 3rd person singular: t
• 1st person plural: mus
• 2nd person plural: tis
• 3rd person plural: nt.

Nouns

The First Three Declensions:

• Cases
  • Latin nouns can change their endings according to cases, as listed in the chart above.
  • A list of the cases and their basic functions.
    • Nominative - used for subject or subjective completion. Analagous to "I".
      • "Cornelia est puella." (Cornelia is a girl.) Both "Cornelia" and "puella" are in the nominative case because Cornelia is the subject, and puella is the complement.
    • Genitive - used for a noun to modify another noun, specifically possession, description, or partitive. Often analagous to "my" or "of me"
      • " Corneliae felis" (Cornelia's cat) Possessive.
      • "Cornelia est puella magnae sapientiae. (Cornelia is a girl of great wisdom.) Partitive.
      • "amphora plena vini (a vase full of wine) Descriptive
    • Dative - Indirect object/ used when "to" or "for" would be. Analagous to "to me" or "for me".
      • Marcus cani pretium dat. (Marcus gave the dog a reward/Marcus gave a reward to the dog.)
    • Accusative - primarily direct object. Some prepositions take the accusative but only when it is motion toward something. Analagous to "me".
      • Felis piscem petit. (The cat looks for fish.)
      • Cornelia ovum consumit. (Cornelia eats an egg)
    • Ablative - Object of a preposition (any preposition that IS NOT motion towards) in addition to means, manner in which, agent, and in a construction called the ablative absolute. Not strictly analagous to any form in English.
      • Vocative - Direct Address. Analagous to "I!"
      • AND SOMETIMES Locative - used to show the location of something

Practice

Vocabulary:

• puella, -ae, f. girl
• sub, prep. underneath, under
• arbor, -oris, f. a tree
• sedeo sedere sedi sessum, to sit

Example: Puella sub arbore sedet. The girl sits (or is sitting or does sit) under the tree.

Verbs

Latin verbs are quite like the verbs of other languages, such as Spanish. Each verb usually has 4 principle parts (a good amount of them only have 3). Latin verbs are formed on the basis of a root and an ending.

Lets start with an example: Amo, amare, amavi, amatus; To love

The first principle part, amo is the 1st person present active singular indicative form of the verb "to love". What this means is that you translate it as I love, or I am loving.

The second principle part is the present active infinitive. To translate, its just to be. The infinitive usually ends with are, ere, or ire. In our case of amo, the second principle part is amare, to love. The infinitive dictates the root used for many forms of the verb.

The third principle part is the 1st singular perfect active indicative. The perfect case is translated as a completed action. Our Amavi is translated as I have loved or I loved (be careful, there is a difference between had loved and have loved). The 3rd principle part shows the root for much of the perfect system.

The fourth principle part is the Perfect Passive Participle, abbreviated as the PPP. The PPP is a participle, in the past tense. Amatus would be translated as "having been loved" The perfect passive participle is very important for passives in Latin verbs.

Most of this stuff will be pretty confusing for now. The key idea is that Latin verbs have 4 principle parts, and what each principle part means

See also

• Wikiversity's Latin Department
• A2 Latin

External links

• Doctus - Platform independent language drills
• - The Latin Language Learning Podcast from London