Latin/Basics Lesson 1

Salvēte omnēs! (Hello everyone!)

If you are one of the many interested in learning the ancient and beautiful Latin language, here is a starter lesson for you.

Vocabulary

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English Latin Audio (Classical) Notes
girl puella
woman fēmina
boy puer
man vir
Either is acceptable;
homō has a more universal usage (human) as opposed to
vir (biologically male human)
man homō

Phrases

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Latin English Audio (Classical) Notes
All phrases
ūnus puer one boy
ūna fēmina one woman
introducing the adjective unus,a,um to mean one, modifying a masculine or feminine noun
illa puella that girl, THE girl
Latin doesn't have article adjectives but may use demonstrative adjectives/pronouns for a similar purpose or to add emphasis -- do not worry too much about it until later, though
ille homō that man, the man
ille vir that man

Sentences

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Latin English Audio (Classical) Notes
All sentences
Sum fēmina I am a woman
I am the woman.
Ego fēmina sum. I am a woman
I am the woman.
Introducing subject pronoun
Ego = I
and the flexible word order of Latin sentences.
Vir sum I am a man
I am the man.
Ego sum puer
Sum puer
Puer sum.
I am a boy.
Puella sum. I am a girl.
Ille homō sum. I am that human being
I am that man.
Sum illa fēmina I am that woman.
Sum ūna puella
Ūna puella sum
Ego ūna puella sum
Ego sum ūna puella
Ego sum puella ūna.
I am one girl.

Practice

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Practice and learn the words and phrases in this lesson
Step one First learn the words using this lesson:
Step two Next try learning and writing the sentences using this:
Note that the Memrise stage covers the content for all the lessons in this section

As you can see if you made it this far, Latin has an incredibly flexible word order within sentences. It makes up for this flexibility with a very rigid and absolute requirement for the correct grammatical endings for nouns and verbs, as becomes very obvious within the first few days of study. This is precisely why it makes it easy to learn with online tools. Making Grammar-learning mistakes into a game automatically makes it fun and is a fantastic resource to add to any learning situation. You can try these sentences on Memrise.

Thanks for reading and... Habeātis bonam fortūnam!