Use the dropdown menus to select the correct form of the word so that the Latin sentence is equivalent to the sentence in English. The poet is praising the life of philosophy. Poēta vītam [philosophiae] laudat. He is praising the beauty of roses. fōrmam [rosarum] laudat. They love roses. [rosas] amant. The opinion of the poet is great. [sententia] poētae magna est. We ought to preserve the fame of the fatherland. fāmam [patriae] cōnservāre dēbēmus.

What gender are the majority of nouns in the 1st declension?

Give your opinion to the sailors! What word is missing from the following Latin sentence so that it translates the underlined part of the English sentence above? sententiam tuam [nautis] dā! Don’t forget to add macrons! You can copy and paste letters with macrons into the word with these letters: ā ē ī ō ū

Introducing Latin nouns: conclusion Great! We’ve now looked at the basics of Latin nouns by looking at the Latin case system and building nouns drawn from the 1st declension. This is a very important foundation for our work! Let’s move on with some drills, and then turn to thinking further about how to translate sentences from Latin into English.

One last point… Have you noticed that these translations all feature the English articles “a, an” or “the”, but there is no equivalent of these words in Latin? That’s because there is no equivalent! One of the things we have to do translating is decide what works best: sometimes “a poet” (as in “My friend is a poet”), sometimes “the” (as in “Vergil is the poet who wrote the Aeneid”); sometimes no article will be required at all (as in “Poets don’t need articles!”). Later in the course we’ll look at other words that specify noun usage more clearly. But for now, remember to translate articles if you think it makes better sense!

poēta puellam laudat. Match the words in the above Latin sentence with their grammatical role.

Nouns and declensions As you can see, case plays a huge role in how we use nouns (and adjectives) in Latin. There are other considerations too, however. We also need to take into consideration number, just like in verbs: if we have one “poet”, the noun will be singular; many “poets” will be plural. We see inflection in English nouns here too with the addition of the morpheme -s to the noun (with some irregularities: what is the plural of sheep?), so we should expect to see Latin too have distinctive ways of indicating plural nouns. A third and final consideration is gender. There are three genders in Latin: masculine, feminine, and neuter (which means “neither”). These are largely grammatical ideas: although male nouns (like “man”, “boy”, “husband”, etc.) will be “naturally” masculine in gender, and female nouns (like “woman”, “girl”, “wife”, etc.) will be “naturally” feminine, these are mostly conventional labels determined by ancient grammarians. Is there really anything essentially feminine about feminine nouns like “gate” (porta), “shape” (forma), or “money” (pecūnia)? All in all, then, we can inflect nouns in Latin according to these three characteristics: case, number, and gender. Moreover, nouns that follow the same patterns in these characteristics are thought to belong to the same group or declension — just like verbs that follow the same pattern are thought to belong to the same conjugation. Declensions are typically organized by gender. The first declension, which we’re looking at in this module, is largely organized by the feminine gender: almost all of its nouns, with a few exceptions, are feminine. This means there is no “masculine” version of porta, or forma; they are simply feminine, first declension nouns, and will exhibit the same endings when they change into different cases and numbers.

Fill in the blanks below to compose the following English sentence in Latin: The girl praises the poet. [subject] [object] laudat. Don’t forget to add macrons! You can copy and paste letters with macrons into the word with these letters: ā ē ī ō ū

Decline patria, patriae, f. in the singular and plural in the chart below.  Case Singular Plural Nominative [patria1] [patriae3] Genitive [patriae1] [patriarum] Dative [patriae2] [patriis1] Accusative [patriam] [patrias] Ablative [patria2] [patriis2] Vocative [patria3] [patriae4]

Use the dropdown menus to select the correct nominative form of the missing word so that the Latin sentence is equivalent to the sentence in English. Ignore uses of the article in English (“the”, “a, an”)! Poets love roses. [poetae] rosās amant. The sailor owes money. [nauta] pecūniam dēbet. Girls love philosophy. [puellae] philosophiam amant. The poet praises fortune. [poeta] fortūnam laudat. Sailors frighten girls. [nautae] puellās terrent. Roses summon feelings. [rosae] sententiās vocant.