SAAAALLVEETEEEE, MEMBERRRRRBAAASSE! *roman salute*
For those of you only understand English, “Hello, memberbase!” This article is one of a series to guide you, the reader, to a better understanding of Latin. We’re going to start with nouns.
A family of nouns is called a Declension. There are five declensions in Latin. But we’re taking this slowly, so we’ll start only with the first declension. In Latin, each declension has its own set of endings according to Case, or how they’re being used. In English, our nouns don’t change much according to use. Furthermore, there are six different uses of nouns.
Here are the six different uses of a noun:
Subject / Nominative Case
Possessive / Genitive Case
Indirect Object / Dative Case
Direct Object / Accusative Case
Object of the Preposition / Ablative
Direct Address / Vocative
For our purposes, we don’t really need to know the formal names of the Cases. Subject, Possessive, Indirect Object, and so forth will be fine. A useful acronym to remember these uses is: SPIDOV.
How about an explanation of these uses?
The Subject is the doer of the action. The go-getter. The risk-taker.
For example: “The dog walks to the house.” The subject is “dog.” He’s the brave soul taking action.
The Possessive is the possessor of other nouns, whether they are the Subject, the Direct Object, the Indirect Object, or Object of the Preposition. The Possessive owns. And pwns.
For example: “The master’s dog walks to the house.” The possessive noun here is “Master’s.” It is taking ownership of our brave Subject. However, when you see a possessive form in Latin, it can be translated two ways: Master’s, or Of the Master. Personally, I prefer Master’s. It is less confusing.
The Indirect Object is an indirect receiver of the Subject’s action. The best indicator of an Indirect Object is the preposition “to.”
For example: “The dog walks to the house.” The Indirect Object here is “house” indicated by “to the.”
The Direct Object is the receiver of the action. The victim. The pity party.
For example: “The dogs walks there.” The Direct Object in this sentence is ‘there.’ Poor ‘there.’ Always has dogs walking all over it.
The Object of the Preposition is like a bystander, or a third party.
For example: “The dog walks around the human.” The noun ‘human’ would be the object of the preposition ‘around.’ Note how it makes a prepositional phrase, which can be moved around in the sentence, like so: “Around the human, the dog walks.” This can be easily confused with the Indirect Object. So make sure to test prepositions. A good preposition test would be: “The dog walked ___ the human.” If it makes sense in the blank, it is a preposition.
And we’ll save the vocative case for later.
Now for the LATIN!
In latin, nouns have endings to identify their use. It’s actually quite handy, since it’s more specific than in English. Now, you have to memorize these noun endings, and there is a different set of endings for each declension of nouns. I’m only going to give you the noun endings for the first declension right now.
Here are some first declension nouns to get you started. I’ll give you both the Subject singular and Possessive singular forms.
Agricola Agricolae – farmer
Ancilla Ancillae – Maidservant
Janua Januae – Door
Cena Cenae – Dinner
Puella Puellae – Girl
Villa Villae – House
Mensa Mensae – Table
Pecunia Pecuniae - Money
To use these words in a sentence, simply replace the ending of the word according to use. The only part of the ending you change is the a at the end of a first declension noun.
For example, “The girl walked to the farmers.” Girl would be in the Subject singular form, so you would use Puella. Farmer is in the Indirect Object plural form, so you would use Agricolis. “Puella Agricolis ambulavit.”
Tune in next time for the low-down on verbs. Thanks for reading!