Beginner's Latin
Latinum hodie disce!

Lesson 2: Nouns

Similiar to verbs, Latin nouns change their ending based on certain characteristics. Here, the characteristics are known as the case of the noun. The following table summarizes the six different cases that a noun can take. Latin does not have articles ("a", "an", or "the") so they must be provided in translation.

Case	English Part of Speech	Examples
Nominative	Subject	He, she, it, they, you, I
Genitive	Possessive	His, her, its, their, your, my
Dative	Indirect object	to him, to her, to it, to them, to you, to me
Accussative	Direct Object	saw him, saw her, saw it, saw them, saw you, saw me
Ablative	Object of the Preposition	by/with/from him, her, it, them, you, me
Vocative	Exclamation	"Oh father (vocative case)! Help me!"

These six cases must be distiguished in order to decline (conjugate for nouns/adjectives) correctly. It is important to note that the vocative case takes the same form as the nominative, with one exception which is not discussed here.

Now that we understand cases, we can look at the types of adjectives. There are two parts to categorizing nouns: number of declension and gender.

• Number of declension:
  This sounds complicated, but it is the same idea as verb conjugations with a little less complication. The ending of a noun is determined only on what declesion it is and what case is needed. There are 5 declension types, but we will discuss two.


• Gender:
  This also helps determine what kind of a noun we are looking at. For example a woman is a feminine noun and male is masculine. There is a third type, neuter, that is neither gender. The gender of the noun also determines what form adjectives should take on, but more about that in the next lesson.

Vocab entries consist of the nominative and genitive forms of verbs with the gender in parenthesis. Now that we know the basics of nouns, we can look at the two declesions.

Declension

Each declension, 1st and 2nd, follow the same pattern of endings. For the most part, 1st declension nouns are feminine, but some masculine as well. Mostly masculine and neuter make up the 2nd declension. As previously mentioned, a noun's declension determines the ending, but in order to make an adjective-noun pair, the gender of the noun must be known. The steps to decline a noun are slightly different from verb conjugation.

1. Find the root of the noun.
2. Determine the correct ending based on the declension.
3. Add the ending to the root.

Same basic principles with a twist. The root of nouns is the genitive form without the ending. So for the noun porta, portae (f.), the root is port. Nominative forms do not always follow the root so both nominative and genitive must be known to fully decline a noun.

The following is a table showing the endings of the three types of declesions for the nouns: porta, portae (f.); Amīcus, Amīcī (m.); and Dōnum, Dōnī (n.).



This concludes the noun lesson, continue on to adjectives by clicking below!