11 12 Intro to Latin # Nomen: Classis: Things you will know / understand by the end of this chapter:

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1 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: fama, famae case: function: singular: plural: words added: Nominative (subject) fama famae Genitive (possession) famae famarum of Dative (indirect object) famae famis to / for Accusative (direct object) famam famas Ablative (object of a preposition) fama famis Vocative (direct address) fama famae Chapter 2 - Page 1

2 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: Chapter 2 - Page 2

3 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 1 st declension noun Now let s look at the Latin nouns themselves. In this chapter, we will be learning 1 st 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. Chapter 2 - Page 3

4 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 2 nd form, that is, the genitive. puella, puellae Therefore, the base is PUELL. Part 3: - Forming and translating 1 st 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 (1 st Declension Noun endings) are! Singular Plural N a ae G ae arum D ae is Ac am as Ab a is V a 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: N puella puellae 1. Remove ae from the 2 nd form. G puellae puellarum 2. Write the base down 12 times. D puellae puellis 3. Add the case endings. Ac puellam puellas Ab puella puellis V puella puellae Chapter 2 - Page 4

5 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

6 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 1 st 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 1 st 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 1 st 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

7 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 1 st 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? Chapter 2 - Page 7

8 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 1 st 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