Basic Grammar – Noun Declensions I, II, and III

I was trying to think of a good way to teach Latin grammar in baby steps, but I think it will be easier to just get through the basics as quickly as possible so we can get to the interesting stuff.

So as I said before, there are 5 noun declensions. This lesson will cover the first three, which are all much more commonly used than the 4th and 5th declensions.

Before I begin, I will quickly review how a noun is declined. First of all, “declining” is now you change a noun depending on several factors.

Singular vs. Plural – there are different forms for singular and plural nouns. English has a very simplified version of this – “rat” is singular, and “rats” is plural. Notice how you append an “s” to “rat” to make it plural.

Case – the case of a noun is how the noun is used in a sentence. I explained cases pretty thoroughly earlier, so hopefully you understand them. Every case has a singular and plural version.

Gender – the Romans (or probably their precursors) decided that every single noun had to have a gender. So in the Latin language every noun is one of three genders – female (feminine), male (masculine), and neuter. Now when it comes to a noun being feminine or masculine, its gender does not affect how it is declined. You just decline it based on what declension it is in. However, when a noun is neuter, you always decline it slightly differently than a feminine or masculine noun.

1st Declension – The first declension is composed almost entirely of feminine nouns ending in -a in the nominative case and -ae in the genitive case, like puella, -ae, f., girl. Notice the prevalence of -ae endings in the chart below. It is kind of annoying.

hihihihihihihihihSingular:             Plural:
Nominative:       puella                 puellae
Genitive:            puellae               puellarum
Dative:               puellae               puellīs
Accusative:        puellam              puellās
Ablative:            puellā                 puellīs

2nd Declension – The second delcension is composed mostly of masculine nouns ending in -us in the nominative case and -ī in the genitive case, like servus, -ī, m., slave. However, there are a few nouns that end in -r or -er in the nominative but are declined as a second declension noun otherwise – puer, -ī, m. boy; vir, -ī, m., man; ager, agrī, m., field. So the genitives of puer, vir, and ager are puerī, virī, and agrī, respectively.

hihihihihihihihihSingular:             Plural:
Nominative:       servus                servī
Genitive:             servī                  servorum
Dative:                servō                 servīs
Accusative:         servum              servōs
Ablative:             servō                 servīs

2nd Declension neuter – There are also neuter nouns that are declined as second declension nouns. The most important feature of all neuter nouns is that they have the same endings for both the nominative and accusative forms. For example, baculum, -ī, n., staff, is a neuter noun. So if you wanted to say, for some reason, “The staff hits the staff,” you would say in Latin, “Baculum verberat baculum,” whereas if you wanted to say, “The slave hits the slave,” you would say, “Servus verberat servum.” Do you see how the ending for baculum does not change while the ending for servus does? That is pretty much the difference between masculine and neuter second declension nouns. The one other divergence between the two is that the nominative and accusative plural for the neuter nouns always end with -a, as opposed to -ī and -ōs. So “the staffs hit the staffs” would be “bacula verberant bacula,” whereas “the slaves hit the slaves” would be “servī verberant servōs.” Unfortunately, the -a ending for plural nominative and accusative second declension neuter nouns looks an awful lot like the singular nominative ending for first declension verbs (like puella). In those cases, you have to use your intuition, I guess (“Is a staff feminine? Is a girl neuter?”). You can also use the verb for help, because the verb changes form depending on whether or not the subject is plural (bacula verberant vs. puella verberat). Unfortunately, since neuter nouns have the same form for the nominative and accusative, you could interpret “bacula verberant” as “they beat the sticks” OR as “the sticks beat.” In these cases, you have to rely on common sense and intuition.

hihihihihihihihihSingular:             Plural:
Nominative:       baculum             bacula
Genitive:            baculī                 baculorum
Dative:               baculō                baculīs
Accusative:        baculum             bacula
Ablative:            baculō                baculīs

3rd Declension – The third declension is a bit more complicated than the first and second declensions. If the first and second declensions were made by the Romans to encompass feminine nouns ending with -a and masculine (and some neuter) nouns ending with (mostly) -us, respectively, then the third declension was kind of made as a bag for all of the other miscellaneous nouns the Romans had that didn’t fit into any of the other declensions. The third declension includes feminine, masculine, and neuter nouns. The nominative endings for the nouns follow no patterns (well, they actually do, but for all purposes right now, it is completely random). I think of the third declension as the declension for all the junk nouns with nominative endings that didn’t follow either first or second declensions (or the fourth and fifth declensions). Unfortunately, third declension nouns are probably the most commonly used in Latin. On the bright side, feminine and masculine nouns are declined the same, and neuter nouns are declined almost the same. Unfortunately, because of this, you can’t tell just by looking what gender a third declension noun is, so you have to memorize their genders. Also, since third declension nouns have all sorts of nominative forms, you have to memorize their stems (by memorizing what they look like in the genitive form), so you know how to decline them.

hihihihihihihihihSingular:             Plural:
Nominative:       pater                  patrēs
Genitive:            patris                 patrum
Dative:               patrī                  patribus
Accusative:        patrem               patrēs
Ablative:            patre                  patribus

Here’s an example – pater, patris, m., father. At first glance, pater looks like it could be a second declension noun like ager. However, upon seeing its genitive form patris, you can tell instantly that it is not second declension, because all singular second declension nouns end with -ī in the genitive form. Now with pater, it is pretty easy to remember that it is masculine. However, there are many words like vox, vocis, f., voice, that are gender-neutral in English but are assigned specific genders in Latin. After this you might be wondering what the use of memorizing noun genders is. Well, adjectives are declined based on the noun they modify, and, you guessed it, gender matters in adjective declension.

3rd Declension neuter – This is similiar to the second declension neuter, but this time it’s in the guise of a third declension noun. You can often detect a third declension neuter noun by look for nouns with nominative endings like -men, -al, and -ut (nomen, animal, caput). There are also quite a few third declension neuter nouns that end in -us in the nominative, like stercus, -oris (dung), genus, -eris (race), latus, -eris (side), facinus, -oris (crime), and funus, -eris (funeral). As a side note – when I list something like stercus, -oris, I mean that stercus is the nominative singular form and that stercoris is genitive singular form (and sterc- is the stem of the noun).

hihihihihihihihihSingular:             Plural:
Nominative:       nomen                nomina
Genitive:            nominis              nominum
Dative:               nominī                nominibus
Accusative:        nomen                nomina
Ablative:            nomine               nominibus

Yay! That’s over with. Just make sure to memorize all the endings.

Repetition – as you memorize the endings, one issue that might worry you is the amount of overlap on endings. Many endings are repeated in between singular and plural, between cases, and between declensions. You would think that if the Romans decided to have so many endings, they would at least make them all different. However, that is not the Roman way, and all Latin learners will just have to learn to deal with it. Here are some tips:

• Memorize – memorize not only the endings and where they are used, but also the gender and stem of each noun you encounter. It’s hard, but if you concentrate it’s not too bad.
• Look at the rest of the sentence – often other words in the sentence can give you hints at what gender and declension your noun is.  Verbs show whether the noun is singular or plural, and adjectives show whether the noun is singular or plural as well as the noun’s case and gender. Of course, I haven’t taught you adjectives yet, so that doesn’t really help…
• Knowledge of the cases – noun cases are extremely important, and I will definitely go more in-depth on them later. For example, only subtle knowledge of the ablative and dative cases can let you decide what case “patribus” is.
• Intuition – only trust your intuition if you know half or more of what you are doing. If you don’t even know half of what you are doing, study more…

Basic Grammar – Verb Conjugation I

Well, now it’s time to tackle verb conjugation, which is even more fearsome than noun declensions. There are, like nouns, five kinds of verbs. In this lesson I will cover the first conjugation very briefly, just to introduce you to the world of Latin verbs.

Conjugation – First of all, what is conjugation? Well, conjugation is the way you change a verb to make a sentence grammatically correct – for example, in English, we conjugate the verb “to be” as “is, are, was, were, will be, has been, have been…” and so on. Unfortunately, Latin verb conjugation is pretty crazy (though not as out-of-hand as Spanish and Greek and some other languages).

Several factors determine how a verb should be conjugated in Latin:

Tense – one of the most important factors is, of course, the tense of a sentence. Latin has six tenses, and I’ll list them from the most past tense to the most future tense -
pluperfect (I had played), perfect (I played), imperfect (I was playing), present (I play, I am playing, I keep playing), future (I will play), and future perfect (I will have played).

I won’t go into a full blown discussion of tenses yet, but just to satisfy any possible curiosity you might have about them, I’ll review them quickly. The perfect tenses are considered “perfect” because they describe actions that have already been completed. Pluperfect describes an action completed before a past action (I had enjoyed learning Spanish before I began to learn Latin). The perfect tense describes an action that has been completed (I tripped and it hurt). The imperfect tense describes past actions that were in the process of being completed, but not yet finished (I was running for shelter before the lightning struck me)(or, if you want a less random example: I was gracefully speaking Latin before a large audience until the fly began to annoy me. Maybe that wasn’t less random). The present tense in Latin can be translated into English in three different ways – I play, I am playing, and I keep playing. The Romans apparently did not distinguish between the three (thankfully), but sometimes the Latin can be translated to the English in only one way for it to make sense (unfortunately). For example, “He is playing, despite his mother’s demands otherwise,” sounds like an annoying commentary or documentary, whereas, “He keeps playing, despite his mother’s demands otherwise,” sounds a bit less unnatural (if you don’t frame it in the “annoying commentary” mindset). The future tense is hopefully self-explanatory. The future perfect tense describes an action that you suppose will already have been completed in the future. Unfortunately, it does not fit seamlessly into English. It is especially used in “when” clauses in Latin – When I visit Rome, I will see the Pantheon. As you can see, it is not “When I will have visited Rome,” though the future perfect tense is used in the Latin version of the sentence. Another example – “Next time we meet, I will have learned Latin inside and out.” So yeah, more on the future tense in another post… It is definitely the most awkward Latin verb tense.

The subject of the sentence influences a verb in Latin immensely. The subject does so to a lesser degree in English (I am awesome; you are awesome; he is awesome). The two ways a subject influences verb conjugation are number and person.

Number – Whether or not a subject is singular or plural plays a part in determining the form of a verb. There are few exceptions, and I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

Person – As in 1st person (I, we), 2nd person (you, you all/y’all), and 3rd person (he/she/it, they). Fortunately, verbs don’t change based on the gender of the subject, so the same verb form is used for he, she, and it (and of course none of the other forms change based on their subjects’ gender either).

Two more things:

Voice – as in active (I carry) and passive (I was carried). Latin also has passive and active voices. However, I am only talking about the active now. The passive will be talked about later.

Mood – as in indicative (They flee) and subjunctive (Let them flee). Latin has both indicative and subjunctive moods. However, I will only breach the indicative mood (which is just normal verb usage). I will not tread near the subjunctive mood for a long, long time, as it is evil and is not used in the exact same way the subjunctive tense in English is used (thankfully, for English speakers).

Um, and one last thing that is actually important:

Infinitives – I have to discuss these before going on. Infinitives are the “to” form of a verb – like “to dance,” “to play,” “to be,” and so on. Latin verbs always have infinitive forms. For example, ambulat’s infinitive form is ambulāre and the infinitive form of errat (he/she/it wanders) is errāre. Do you see the pattern? To get the infinitive form of a Latin verb, you just take the stem of the verb and add -āre to it. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple… The vowel in front of the -re actually differs among Latin verbs. First conjugation verbs have an ā, and the other four conjugations have different vowels. In fact, that is how Latin verb conjugations are defined. (There is actually one conjugation that has the same vowel as another, but it’s an exception and we’ll worry about that later). Well, enough with that, and on to the first conjugation!

First conjugation – first conjugation verbs are probably the simplest to decline. They are characterized by having an “a” in their infinitive form.

Here’s a chart for the present tense of the first conjugation verb ambulo (I walk). The stem of ambulo is ambul-; I will bold the changing portions of the verb.

hihihihihSingular                             Plural
First      ambulō (I walk)                  ambulāmus (we walk)
Second  ambulās (you walk)            ambulātis (you all walk)
Third     ambulat (he/she/it walks)  ambulant (they walk)

Do you notice the prevalence of a’s in the conjugation? All but ambulo have a’s (first person singular ends with an o in every conjugation). Also take note that most of the a’s and the o are long.

When I define verbs, I will list their first person singular form as well as their infinitive form, because you can’t tell what the conjugation of a verb is by just looking at its first person singular form. In most cases, however, you can tell what the conjugation of a verb is by looking at the infinitive form of the verb.

So I would define ambulō as:

ambulō, ambulāre – to walk

Notice, once again, that the infinitive of the first conjugation has an a.

Here are some practice sentences (with mostly first conjugation verbs):

Gaius ad Titum ambulat, et Gaius et Titus ad agrōs ambulant. Gaius ad Titum vocat, “Ad bovēs (cows) ambulas!” Titus ad Gaium inquit, “Ad umbrās (shade) ambulō. Calidus est.”

Sorry for the not-so-inspired sentences. However, now at least you can translate them! How exciting. Anyway, here’s a translation:

Gaius walks to Titus, and Gaius and Titus walk to the fields. Gaius shouts to Titus, “You are walking to the cows!” Titus says to Gaius, “I am walking to the shade. It is hot.”

Notice how I translate the present tense in different ways. In fact, instead of translating “Ad bovēs ambulas!” as “You are walking to the cows,” I could also translate it as “You keep walking to the cows” (or, “You walk to the cows,” though that’s kind of weird).

Well, that’s it for now, and if you are confused or just nonplussed by my tortuous logic or bad examples, just ask for clarification.

Basic Grammar – Noun Cases

So you’re probably wondering what all those noun forms were earlier – you know, Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, and Ablative. Some are easy to understand, some need a long explanation. I’ll try my best to explain.

Stems

Before I begin, you have to know about stems. I explained in the previous post, but I’ll do it again. The stem of a noun is the part that appears when it is declined. Like for ager, the stem is agr-, because when ager is declined, every form of the noun except for the nominative singular features agr-.

hihihihihihihihihiSingular:             Plural:
Nominative:       ager                  agrī
Genitive:            agrī                  agrorum
Dative:               agrō                 agrīs
Accusative:        agrum              agrōs
Ablative:            agrō                 agrīs

Since the nominative singular often does not feature the stem of a noun, it is common practice to also list the genitive of a noun when defining it so that you know what the stem looks like. So if I were defining ager, I would write:
ager, agrī, m., field (the m. stands for masculine, because Latin nouns have gender. More on that in a later post).

Okay, enough with stems. Here are the different noun cases.

Noun Cases

• Nominative – kind of like the “default” noun case. This form is used when the noun is the subject of a sentence or the predicate nominative of a sentence. Hopefully you haven’t forgotten your basic English grammar and remember what subjects and predicate nominatives are. If you don’t, a subject is the noun in the sentence that is doing an action (the dog bit the boy), and a predicative nominative is a noun used with a linking verb. Huh?
  Here are some examples – that cat is brown; this porridge tastes bland; an ox is a male cow; Robert seems sad; the Biology book is a beast; et cetera.
  The nominative form is also used when the noun is a subject or predicative nominative of a prepositional phrase (in most cases) like “Marcus ambulat ad agrōs quod Aurelius est” (Marcus walks to the fields because Aurelius is there) – notice that Aurelius is nominative.
  The nominative form of a noun often does not include its stem.

• Genitive – the possessive form of a noun. Whereas the nominative does not always feature the stem of a noun (as I discussed before), the genitive always does. The genitive form of each noun declension is unique, so if you want to identify what declension a noun is in, looking at the genitive form is a sure way of finding out. That’s why I will list the genitive form of each noun along the nominative when I give a definition.

• Dative – now it gets tricky. The dative form is used in several different situations – but there IS a somewhat common theme here. Dative is always used when a noun is an indirect object – I hope you know what that means. If you don’t, an example – I gave Edgar a toy. Do you see? I did not give Edgar – I gave a toy to Edgar. So Edgar is an indirect object. Another example – I mailed Billy a letter. I hope you see the pattern. So dative case is used in those situations (Do puerō baculum – I give a staff to a boy). Dative is also used as “for” and “to” (when the “to” is being used where a “for” could also be used) -
  if you wanted to say “The boy’s name is Gaius,” you could say “Puerī nomen Gaius est.” However, the Romans liked more to say “The name to/for the boy is Gaius” – which requires the dative case. That would be “Nomen puerō Gaius est.”
  In later grammar posts, I will explain more usages of the dative.

• Accusative – ah, a bit easier. Kind of. Accusative is mainly used for direct objects – hopefully you know what that is. If you don’t, a direct object is a noun that is having something done to it.
  Examples – Bob ate an apple. Marcus wrote Latin. Odoacer destroyed the Roman empire.
  Okay, hopefully you get that.
  Unfortunately, accusative is used for a bit more – it is also used in most prepositions. So if you want to say, “Marcus walks to the fields” it would be “Marcus ambulat ad agrōs” – ad is a VERY important preposition that means “towards” or “to.” Ad is only used in the sense that you are moving towards something – if you are giving something to someone, that would be just dative with no preposition (“Do puerō baculum”).
  If you see a preposition, just take it for granted that it takes the accusative. However, there is a set of very commonly used preposions that take the ablative. But more on that below…

• Ablative – the most complicated form. I’ll just say it now. Ablative is evil. There is no English equivalent of the ablative whatsoever – you just have to take this form on a case-by-case basis. There are certain prepositions that only take the ablative – here they are, and remember them (very, very, very) well, because they are very common:

  Sub – under
  In – in, on
  Dē – about, down from, concerning
  
  Sine – without
  Prō – for (as in “in support of”), in front of, on behalf of
  Ā, ab – from, away
  Cum – with
  Ēx – out of, from

  Yes, they spell SID SPACE. If you can think of anything better, please tell me.
  There are many, many, many other uses for the ablative. I will not mention them in “Basic Grammar,” however, because that would be cruel and useless. And too long.

Well, I hope that these explanations help you understand the language. This stuff is pretty confusing, so if you have questions, please ask. And once I explain first declension and once I get through how verbs work, all of the pieces should begin to fit together.

Basic Grammar – Noun Declension II

“Declension” is a word that makes most Latin students cringe (including me from time to time…). All languages have a bit of declining to do, but few decline as zealously as Latin.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, I should probably explain what a declension is. A declension is pretty much a type of noun – Latin has five types, English has one. And declining a noun means to run through its various grammatical forms – so you know how in English we have singular, plural, and possessive forms of nouns? I’ll use the word “slave” as an example – to decline “slave,” I would just list:

slave
slaves
slave’s
slaves’

and that would be that. Things get a bit more complicated with words like “ox,” but on the whole, English is simple.

Unfortunately, Latin is not simple. To start off with, there are five different types of nouns – but because this is basic grammar, I’ll just begin with one declension.

The SECOND Declension – yes, I kind of messed up with the earlier lessons by introducing you to second declension words before first declension ones….  But it does NOT really matter – first declension words are feminine and end in -a (in general), and second declension words are masculine and end in -us (in general).

Declining of the second declension word servus (meaing “slave”):

hihihihihihihihihSingular:             Plural:
Nominative:       servus                servī
Genitive:            servī                  servorum
Dative:               servō                 servīs
Accusative:        servum              servōs
Ablative:            servō                 servīs

Memorize that well. Just so you will understand what I‘m going to talk about, the nominative form of a noun appears when the noun is the subject or predicate nominative of a sentence (I‘ll bold the subjects of the sentences in this paragraph so you can see). The genetive form is the possessive form. Most Latin words that end in -us follow that pattern (words like Julius, filius (son), and so on). However, there are some notable exceptions to that rule – the words puer (boy) and ager (field). To let you understand that, I‘ll briefly explain stems to you.

Most languages have stems, so the term is hopefully familiar to you. In Latin’s case, the stem of a noun is its genitive (possessive) singular form, minus the -ī at the end. So the stem of servus is serv-, which isn’t that surprising, huh? But the genitive of ager is agrī, so the stem is agr-. The genitive of puer is puerī, so its stem is puer-. So puer and ager are both second declension nouns, even though they don’t end in -us. I’ll decline the singular of ager just for fun:

ager
agrī
agrō
agrum
agrō

See? Just the nominative case is different. Everything else is the same. So how can you tell if a word is second declension? Well, if you just see the nominative form, you can’t, ever tell, even if it ends in -us. That’s just how Latin is. However, if you see a word and it is not in its nominative form, you can usually tell. For example, if you saw the word “ager” in a Latin sentence and you didn’t know what declension it was, you would not be able to tell. But if you saw “agrī,” then you should instantly be able to tell that it is second declension, because second declension is the only declension with a possessive form like that (though it might be something else, but more on that later… I don’t want to confuse you).

So from now on, whenever I show you a new noun, I’ll include the nominative and genitive singular form as well as the gender (as most textbooks list it) – the nominative form so that you can see what the noun looks like in that form, since it is usually the odd form that doesn’t feature the word’s stem in its spelling (like with ager). The genitive form is the most important, because in that form you can see what the stem is and what declension it is in (because each declension has a unique genitive form).

So I would list ager, puer, and servus as:

ager, agrī, m. – field
puer, puerī, m. – boy
servus, -ī, m. – slave

I didn’t put “servī” in there because it is obvious that the -us is replace by an -ī. That’s how the textbooks do it, so I’m doing it like that too.

Now you’re probably wondering what the heck those words on the side (like nominative, genitive, dative, and so on) mean. People fill books with what they mean, so I’ll let you read those books. Or, I mean, I’ll have to make a separate post for them. In the meantime, just blindly digest the conjugation of second declension words.

Lesson 2: Simple Latin Sentences II

Time for a few more sentences!

Gaius ambulat ad agrōs quod Titus est. Diēs est calidus, sed Gaius est laetus quod baculum habet (some people like holding staffs. There is nothing strange about that.). Titus habet saxum. Titus non est laetus (he’s not one of those types of people).

Latin Vocab:

ad agrōs – to the fields
quod – because
diēs – day
calidus – warm
sed – but
laetus – happy
baculum – staff, stick
habet – has, holds
saxum – rock
non – not

Gaius ambulat ad agrōs quod Titus est. Diēs est calidus, sed Gaius est laetus quod baculum habet. Titus habet saxum. Titus non est laetus.

Translation:
Gaius walks to the fields because Titus is there. The day is warm, but Gaius is happy because he has a staff. Titus has a rock. Titus is not happy.

Grammar note: Did you see how I translated “Titus est” as “Titus is there”? If you ever see “est” with only one thing, that means 1) if the one thing is an adjective, that means a pronoun was left out – or 2) if the one thing is a noun, then most likely the word “there” was left out.
Example – “Est locus” – “locus” means “place” – “Est locus” is translated as “There is a place.”
Example – “Parvus est” – translated as “He is small.”

Negation – most verbs can be negated by adding a “non” somewhere in the sentence.

That’s it, I think. If you have any questions, just post them.

Lesson 2: Simple Latin Sentences I

Yay! Now that you’re done with the boring stuff, you can finally move on to some real, live Latin. Well, at this level Latin is still a bit boring. But hopefully it’ll be exciting to learn some basic words and grammar!

Puer ambulat ad domum. Puer ad amicum vocat, “Salve, Tite!” (pronounced “tee-teh,” remember?). Titus inquit, “Salve, Gaie!” Gaius est altus, et Titus est parvus. Titus ad Gaium currit.

Um, yeah, that’s about it for now. Time to dissect those sentences.

Latin vocab:
puer – boy
ambulat – walks
ad domum – to the house
ad amicum – to the friend (notice a pattern?)
vocat – calls
Salve – hello (when talking to only one person)
inquit – says
est – is
altus – tall
parvus – short
currit – runs

Puer ambulat ad domum. Puer ad amicum vocat, “Salve, Tite!” (pronounced “tee-teh,” remember?). Titus inquit, “Salve, Gaie!” Gaius est altus, et Titus est parvus. Titus ad Gaium currit.

Grammar note: Latin doesn’t really use articles like “a” and “the.” When translating into English, just supply the articles yourself. Latin also usually skims over possessive adjectives like “his” and “hers.” Actually, Latin also usually leaves out pronouns whenever it can as well….

English translation:
The boy walks to the house. The boy calls to his friend, “Hi, Titus!” Titus says, “Hi, Gaius!” Gaius is tall, and Titus is small. Titus runs to Gaius.

Not the most exciting few sentences… Sorry, but my creative juices aren’t really flowing right now.

Addressing masculine nouns ending in -us: Did you notice that “Titus” was “Tite” when Gaius called him? This is a special thing that only happens with masculine words that end in -us. If you address someone or something (who knows), like, “Hi, Titus!” in English, it would be “Salve, Tite!” in Latin. If you wanted to say, “Hi, small Titus!”, it would be “Salve, parve Tite!” (pronounced pahr-weh Tee-teh), because “parvus” ends in -us as well.

Try to get a hang of the super-advanced Latin here, and remember the words and grammar notes. If you have any questions, just post them!

Lesson 1: Dipthongs

For some reason, the Romans created dipthongs, which are special combinations of two vowels that are pronounced oddly and as only ONE syllable. There are five of them and they are easy to learn.

• ae – as in eye (example – aedēs – EYE+dace)

• oe – oy, as in boy (example – moenia – MOY+nee+uh)

• eu – hmm, kind of difficult to write. Similar to “iyoo” except slurred and said quickly. (example – eugepae – IYOO+geh+pie). Remember that it’s only one syllable. You almost have to use some fake ridiculous accent to pronounce eu, and I always feel embarrassed after using it…

• au – as in oww (example – aurum – “ow+rum”)

• ui – a quick, slurred oowee. (example – huic – hweec)

So the key to the dipthongs is that they are only one syllable. They very rarely flout the rules, so don’t worry about that.

Lesson 1: The Alphabet and Pronunciation

In this lesson I’ll talk about the basic necessities of reading and speaking Latin.

The Latin alphabet is, thankfully, very similar to ours (we call ours “the Roman alphabet” for a reason). At least it’s not like learning Japanese. However, Latin does have some of its own quirks.

Missing Letters – Latin does not have a j or w (and technically not u).

Neglected Letters -Latin makes minimal use of k, x, y, and z. (x, y, and z only appear in words derived from Greek).

Why do the letters j, w, and u not exist in the Latin alphabet? Well, in classical Latin i and v do double duty.

• j – i acts as a vowel most of the time, but is pronounced as a consonantal y when it appears at the beginning of a word or if that word has a prefix.
  That’s kind of confusing, so here’s an example – iuvo is pronounced yoo-woe, and adiuvo, which is ad + iuvo, is pronounced ahd+yoo+woe. ad is a common preposition, and the v is also pronounced as a w (look below for more).
  So WHY should it be a j? Well, Renaissance people became, understandably, frustrated with consonantal i so they made it a j (which explains why the letters look so similar) and decided to pronounce it as our modern-day j instead of as y (Church Latin style). But it really is NOT that hard to figure out, so I’m keeping the consonantal i. However, many books do make use of j, even though it didn’t exist in Classical Latin.

• u – Why should u not be in the alphabet? Well, I guess it’s another convoluted tale… v was used not only as a consonant but also as a u in Classical Latin, kind of like i. When it was used as v, it was pronounced as a w (remember adiuvo – ahdyoowoe – the v is pronounced as a w). When it was used as a u, it either has an “oo” sound (as in “moooo”) or an “uh” sound (as in “us”). Two more examples – arduus is ar-doo-us, whereas fulvus is ful-wus. In classical Latin they both would have been written as ardvvs and fvlvvs. Which is confusing. So I’ll make vowel v’s into u’s.

• w – w isn’t in the alphabet because v is pronounced as a w. There is no v sound as found in English, like in “wolves” or “trove.”

And there are more quirks!

• b – When the letter b precedes s, it is pronounced as a p – hence urbs is pronounced as urps.

• c and g – A VERY important issue is that c and g are always hard. For example, pace is pronounced “pahkeh” and age is “ahgeh.” This can be confusing at first, but with practice it becomes second nature.

The Vowels

• a – The Latin a is pretty different than its American counterpart. a is never pronounced with the nasal noise found in English words like “pat.” In Latin, if there were such a word, it would be pronounced “paht.” a also doesn’t have a long sound like that found in “pay” – that sound is reserved for e. However, a does have a long form in Latin, and it really is just a long form – you just hold the “ah” sound longer. Try to use your gut instinct to decide if an a is long or not. When the pronounciation of an a (whether it’s long or short) is really crucial to the meaning of a word, I’ll put a macron (little line) over it, like this – ā. And yes, sometimes a long or short a can change the meaning of a word.

• e – The Latin e is also not very similar to an American e. A VERY important characteristic of the Latin e is that it is ALWAYS pronounced – as in it is never silent. Here are some examples to drive home the point:imbelle – im+bel+leh
  patre – pah+treh
  pace – pa+keh
  age – ah+gehOkay, so I hope you noticed that a short e is pronounced “eh,” as in “bell.” A long e is pronounced is “ay” is in “pay.” I will also put a macron over long e’s whenever the difference between long and short is crucial to a word (as it all too often is…). Like this – ē.

• i – I already discussed consonantal and vowel i’s. But there’s more. In Latin, the short i is pronounced “ih” is in “pit.” A long i is pronounced “ee.” So fīcus in Latin is pronounced “fee+cus,” not “fie+cus” as in English. I will put macrons over i’s if it is crucial to the meaning of a word or if I feel like it.

• o – a short o is pronounced like the o in “sore” – for example, the second o in soror. A long o is pronounced like the o in “toe.” I will put macrons over long o’s, once again wherever it is crucial to the word (you’ll learn more about that later).

• u – A short u is like a short u in English, like in the word “um.” (Latin example – servus). A long u is like the “oo” in “mooo” – example: utior is pronounced “oot+ee+or.” Like all the other vowels, I will put a macron over the u if it is important and not obvious.

But really, with the vowels, just follow your gut instinct when trying to decide whether to pronounce them in their long or short forms. There are some set rules (actually many), that you will learn later, but for the rest it doesn’t really matter, because it’s not like Latin is spoken anyway…………….

One last note -

Where to Place the Stress in a Word!

Usually in Latin you place the stress on the penultimate, or second-to-last, syllable. Example – ambuLAtor (ahm+boo+LAH+tor).

In some  cases you stress the third-to-last (antepenultimate) syllable. Example – aGRIcola (ah+GREE+ko+lah). How do you decide? If the penultimate syllable is has a long vowel, or at least a vowel that looks like it is somehow longer than the antepenultimate syllable, stress that. If the antepenultimate syllable looks longer, stress that. Trust your gut instinct (although I pronounced agricola agriCOla for an embarrassingly long time…).

So that is IT for all that stuff! Well, almost. I decided to give dipthongs their own page. In the meantime, here are some practice words (with pronunciations below)!

video
tam
pace
pedes
plūs
magnī
fratrō
alē
apēs
quō

wee+DEY+oh
tahm
PAHkay
pehdays (NOT pehdayz)
ploos (not plooz)
MAHGnee
FRAHtroe
AHlay
AHpays
kwoe

Yay! You’re done with that for now!

Intro to Latin

This “blog” is really a place where you can learn Latin. I will, as often as I can, post new lessons on this blog, and all you have to do is read it, memorize the vocab, learn the grammar, and ask any questions you have.

So why would you want to learn Latin in the first place? Well, that’s a question I deal with a lot, and it turns out that Latin doesn’t really have any practical day-to-day use (but please read on!). You can say that it enriches your life, more than anything else. The Latin you’ll be learning is the same language that Cicero, Caesar, and Augustus spoke 2,000 years ago. It is the language of the Romans and the Latins (the people living around Rome), the race that conquered the Mediterranean and then some. Their empire extended from Britain to Egypt and from Morocco to Romania. The power the Romans had over their subjects is evident even now – Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, and countless dialects are based off of Latin (and, of course, many European countries are still criss-crossed by Roman roads and walls, and their judiciary systems owe many attributes to Roman law). In its heyday (0-200ish AD), Rome contained up to 1 million people, a figure that would only be rivaled again by London a millennium and a half later.

The Latin language itself still has surprising relevance in today’s world. It is the language of law and science (fine, I might be exaggerating. But Latin is still used a lot in those disciplines), as well as the Catholic church. A lot of more obscure words are also direct relatives of (somewhat obscure) Latin words! For example, I recently read an article on a spelling bee, and one of the killer words they mentioned was umbones, which is the plural of umbo and means the knob or boss on a shield or anything similar to a knob or boss. Now, that word might be tricky for the average English speaker, but it is instantly evident to anyone who has translated the Aeneid, where umbo makes a star appearance (when Priam throws a spear at Neoptolemus in Book 2)! Another example of where Latin could have helped me out was when I took the SAT before I knew much about the language. One of the vocab words was unctuous, and my young mind decided that the word meant earthy or something like that. If only I had learned the verb unguere (more on why I bolded the e later) in Latin, which means “to anoint.” The adjective unctuous comes almost directly from that verb and means oily or, um, excessively pious.

So please read on! Latin is very rewarding to learn and not as boring as I might have just sounded!

Update: I just realized that people may wonder what “Adlocutor” means – it means “one who addresses or talks to (someone else).” It’s kind of clunky in English, I guess. A shorter translation would be “addresser,” but that sounds like someone who writes addresses on mail… And “vitarkamudra,” my username, is named after the vitarka mudra, a Buddhist hand symbol for debate. I at first intended for this blog to be more debate on world issues, but like 10 minutes after I made it I changed my mind. And I couldn’t change my username… Not to mention that all the usernames I wanted were already taken.