Latin/Chapter 1

Chapter one

Lesson Plan

Cases
Case usage
The 1st Declension
Vocabulary 2
Assignment

Cases

As we learned in the intro there are five cases in the Latin language. Here are the cases again.

Nominative
Accusative
Genitive
Dative
Ablative

Case usage

Nominative

The nominative case is the subject, predicate nominatives, and predicate adjectives.

The SUBJECT performs the action.

Ex. The FARMER loves the girl.

The PREDICATE NOMINATIVE follows a linking verb( is, are, was, were, ect.) and renames the subject.

Ex. The farmer was a POET.

The PREDICATE ADJECTIVE follows a linking verb( is, are, was, were, ect.)and renames the subject.

Ex. The farmer is FAMOUS.

Accusative

The accusative case is the direct object/ and object of certain prepositions.

The direct object receives the action as shown in the table below by the highlighted word.

Latin	English
agricolae aquam portant	The farmers carry the water.
poeta puellas amat	The poet loves the girls.
agricolae viam aedificant	The farmers build a road.
Puellae poetam non amant	The girls do not love the poet.

Genitive

The genitive case shows possession and can be thought of as meaning "of the noun" for its other uses too which we will come to later

Dative

The dative case is the indirect object.

Ablative

The ablative case is object of certain prepositions, and other special uses

The 1st Declension

There are five declensions in Latin. Every single noun has a declension. In Latin unlike English every noun has a gender, there are masculine, feminine, and neuter. Also every noun has a number, singular and plural.

So unto 1st declension. The following are the endings for the 1st declension.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	-a	-ae
Accusative	-am	-as
Genitive	-ae	-arum
Dative	-ae	-is
Ablative	-a	-is

So you may ask what are the endings for? Well the endings are to be added to the noun stem. Also the genitive singular ending tells you what declension a noun belongs to.

To find the noun stem drop the genitive singular ending. Ex.

Poetae - ae = poet

NOTE! Most nouns in the first declension are feminine. With some exceptions, such as agricola, nauta, and poeta. All 3 of those are masculine nouns.

Here is an example:

puella, -ae f. = girl

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	puella	puellae
Accusative	puellam	puellas
Genitive	puellae	puellarum
Dative	puellae	puellis
Ablative	puella	puellis

Vocabulary 1

vita, vitae, f.
casa, casae, f.
fama, famae, f.
familia, familiae, f.
fortuna, fortunae, f.
terra, terrae, f.

VERBS (you will learn about them in the next chapter.)

amo, amare, amavi, amatus
habito, habitare, habitavi, habitatus
laboro, laborare, laboravi, laboratus
paro, parare, paravi, paratus
porto, portare, portavi, portatus
specto, spectare, spectavi, spectatus

Assignment

Your assignment is to find the meaning of all the words in the vocabulary section. Also to decline all the nouns. To decline them means to put them into a table such as the example of puella in the 1st declension section.

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