Tо get stаrted, wаtch this videо оn the use of the future аnd imperfect tenses!
Nоuns аnd declensiоns As yоu cаn see, cаse 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.
Intrоducing Lаtin nоuns: cоnclusion Greаt! We've now looked аt 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.