We also learned the characteristics of a verb: person, number, tense, voice, and mood. Further, we learned the principle parts of a verb as well as the names of each principle part. We learned how to form the present active indicative mood, as well as how to look for a subject for the verb by first looking at the endings of a verb. Last, we learned what an imperative mood was; that there was a singular and plural imperative; and we learned how to form the singular and plural active imperative mood. Now that’s an awful lot of grammar for one day.
I also stated that Latin is primarily a verbal language. And that’s true. But it also has nouns and adjectives, as does every other language. Today we want to look at how the Latin language deals with Nouns. To begin, we need a definition of a noun. A noun is a word that expresses a person, place or thing. (John, Mary, the dog, Taiwan, Taipei, a dish, food etc.) Nouns, just like verb, have their own grouping. We call this grouping a declension. So for a verb the grouping is referred to as a conjugation, for a noun the grouping is referred to as a declension. In Latin, there are five declensions. Again, they are referred to by very technical terms: the 1st declension, the 2nd declension, the 3rd declension, the 4th declension and guess what the last one is called? You got it the 5th declension. And just as there were characteristics of a verb, so there are also characteristics to a noun. Nouns have number, gender and case. Those are the three elements or characteristics of a noun. Later we will learn that they are also the characteristics of a pronoun and an adjective, as well as a participle and a supine. But those will be dealt with much later. Now let’s look at the characteristics of a noun.
Number refers to the singularity or the plurality of the word. (e.g. dog, dogs; girl, girls; man, men) This characteristic should be old information. Why? Because it’s also a characteristic of a verb. A verb can be singular or plural. (e.g. I go, we go) So this characteristic should not be difficult to comprehend or understand.
Gender refers to whether a noun is Masculine, feminine or neuter. In Latin a noun can only be one gender at a time. Man is masculine; Mother is feminine; temple is neuter; people can be either masculine or feminine. Wait a while, I said a noun can only be one gender at a time. But the word, “people”, was masculine and feminine. That’s right. If the people we are referring to are women, then the word is feminine. If the people we are referring to are men, then the word is masculine. Yes, but what if we’re referring to a mixture of people, both men and women, what then. It’s simple the noun is masculine. Why? Because Roman society was male oriented. Women were thought to be inferior to men and had no social importance. You probably don’t agree with that statement, but it really doesn’t make any difference. That’s just how it was in Rome at that time. Another thought to keep in mind, is that the gender of a word has nothing at all to do with the way we view things in our culture, in current times. Today we may consider a tree to be neutral, but the Romans may have viewed a tree as feminine or masculine. In that case, we have to memorize it as masculine or feminine not neutral. Okay. Sometimes that can become confusing because we impose our concepts on words instead of learning their concepts.
Finally Case. Case is a fancy word for how a noun is used in a sentence. Now there are really only six ways one can use a noun in a sentence and one of them isn’t used all that often.
The first use of a noun in a sentence is the subject. The subject is the doer of the action or the main idea or topic of the sentence. E.G. John hit the ball. John is the doer of the action. Studying can be profitable. Studying is an idea and subject of this sentence. In Latin, the subject is referred to as being in the Nominative Case.
The second use of a noun in a sentence is to show possession. (E.g.
John’s book, the dog’s bone, the house of Mary)
Notice in English we use an apostrophe or the preposition “of” to
indicate possession. In Mandarin, we use the word de to indicate possession.
(e.g. Women de tianfu, our father, wo de biao, my watch) In Latin, possession
is indicated by the Genitive Case. Another use for the genitive case is to indicate
which declension you are in. We’ll look at that later.
The next use of a noun is the indirect object. The indirect object is used to mark out the person or thing indirectly affected by the action of the verb. The indirect object is usually used with only certain verbs and is indicated by the use of two prepositions “to” or “for” and its object a person or thing. An example may help clear this concept up a bit. “John bought a dozen roses for his girlfriend.” You do something (the direct object) for someone or something (indirect object). Indirect object will often appear with the verbs buy or do or get, allow. In Latin, the indirect object is referred to as the Dative Case. Okay?
This now takes us to the next use of a noun in a sentence. It’s the Direct Object. The direct object is a person or thing directly affected by the action of the verb. (e.g. John hit the ball) What’s directly affected by the hitting…the direct object ball? In Latin, the direct object is referred to as the Accusative case. The accusative case can also be used after some prepositions.
The next use of a noun is the prepositional phrase. The phrase begins with a preposition and is always followed by an object. In Latin, this used is referred to as the ablative case. The Romans also refined this concept. If the idea express in the phrase time (at three o’clock), place (to Rome), or manner (with a knife), the Romans would use the ablative case without the preposition. But normally with people a preposition would be used.
The last use of a noun, not used to often is that of direct address. It’s usually proceeded by an interjection such as Oh! (e.g. O Lord help me etc.) The Romans referred to this use as the Vocative Case. Often times it looks just like the Nominative and basically has the same function, only a little more precise.
So there you have them, the Cases
Nominative: Subject or Predicate Noun
Genitive: Possession (indicate which declension you are in)
Dative: Indirect Object
Accusative: Direct Object; sometimes the object of a prepositional phrase
Ablative: Prepositional Phrase; time, place, manner
Vocative: Direct Address
These are the characteristics of a noun in basically every language. Now these elements have to be memorized and memorized in the order I gave them. Why? Because later the endings can be given without mentioning the cases if given in this order.
So now let’s look at the First Declension Endings.
Singular Plural
Nom: a ae
Gen: ae arum
Dat: ae is
Acc: am as
Abl: a is
-------------------------------------
Voc a ae
Memorize these endings. You want to know them as well as you know your own name.
The next matter which must be addressed is that of the gender rule for the first declension.
All words in the first declension are feminine, unless they specifically designate or name a male being.
Now how do you work with these endings. Well remember that I told you
when you learn a verb that you have to learn four parts in order to know the
verb. Well in Latin when learning a noun, you have to learn two parts and the
gender. The two parts for all nouns are the nominative and genitive singular.
So
The word gate is porta portae f
Money is pecunia pecuniae f
Why these two parts. Well, in declining a noun (i.e. putting it in all its cases)
you use the genitive singular for the base of the word. And the Genitive singular
does not always look like the nominative, especially in the third declention.
(os, oris; filex, filicis; dens, dentis) If you tried to use the nominative
for the base, eventually you would find that you could not decline a noun any
more. Most of the time, in the first and second declension the nominative and
genitive are similar. But watch out not to get into sloppy habits. Go to the
genitive singular. These two , the nominative and the genitive singular, will
be given to you. To form the other cases, you go to the genitive singular, remove
the ending “ae” and that leaves you with what is know as the stem.
You add the remaining endings to the stem, one at a time, to form the remainder
of the cases.
So
Puella Puellae
Puellae puellarum
Puellae Puellis
Puellam paellas
Puella puellis
Understand?
Last in this chapter we have to look at Adjectives. Whether you know it or not, you know an awful lot about adjective in Latin. You know the endings, so at the moment, you do not have to learn any more endings.
What you must memorize is this rule about adjectives:
Adjectives must agree with the noun they are modifying, in number gender and
case. They do not have to look the same.
Right now they will often look the same, but believe me, later they won’t always look the same.
Puellarum for example is genitive plural feminine; therefore the adjective must use the genitive plural feminine ending. So if we said “of the good girls” in Latin we would have Puellarum bonarum. Notice the adjective follows the noun. Normally the adjective follows the noun in Latin unless it is referring to size or a number.
We’ll get involved much more with adjectives in chapters three and four. For now, this will be sufficient.
Now it’s time to practice and go over the vocabulary and sentences in the workbook.
A little on etymology
Many words in English have their roots in the Latin language. They come directly from the Latin. If you have a solid grasp of the Latin language, you can figure out the meaning of the English word, as well as from what it came.
As an example: Tenacious from teneo to hold on to. So, a tenacious
person is one who will not let go of some thing or some issue; he or she likes
to really get involved in some issue and won’t leave the issue alone until
it is resolved, one way or the other.