One of the most essential components of any sentence are the nouns.  They tell the reader what the sentence is about (the subject), who or what the subject is happening to (indirect object), as well as where the subject is coming from and going to (prepositional phrases).  In this tutorial we will discuss the most important things about nouns and how to use and recognize them in Latin sentences. 

 

The first thing to recognize about a Latin noun is the declension to which the noun belongs.  The process to finding the declension is very simple. You simply look at the genitive singular that is associated with every noun in the Latin dictionary (the second word listed. The first is the nomnative singular).  The genitive singulars of each declension end in:

First	Second	Third	Fourth	Fifth
-ae	-i	-is	-us	-ei

 

Now that you know how to recognize a noun by its genitive, let’s talk about “declining” the word.  Declining is the process of getting the noun into separate cases, or forms that you use in a sentence to show the use of the noun.  Every declension has 5 basic cases: Nomnative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative.  Getting the noun into each case is a little harder that recognizing the declension, but it really is simple after a little practice.  The first step is to drop the genitive singular ending to get your stem word.  Let’s take the 1^st declension word, arma, armae.  Dropping the –ae off the word leaves you with “arm-“, the stem.  Then, all that is left is adding the case endings.  This takes a little memorization, and again, some practice. 

 

Arma, Armae

Case	Singular	Plural	Translation
Nom.	Arma	Armae	The army, the armies (subject)
Gen.	Armae	Armae	The army’s, the armies’ (possessive)
Dat.	Armae	Armis	To/for the army, to/for the armies (indirect object)
Acc.	Armam	Armas	The army, the armies(Direct Object)
Abl.	arma	armis	with the army, with the armies (preposition)

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For the second declension, we will use the noun somnus, somni.  This is also the first declension where gender comes into play. The masculine nouns have one construction, and the neuters have a different set of endings. Somnus, somni is masculine.

 

somnus, somni. m., sleep.

Case	Singular	Plural	Translation
Nominative	somnus	somni	Sleep, many sleeps (subject)
Genitive	somni	somnorum	Of sleep/s (possession)
Dative	somno	somnis	To/for sleep (indirect object)
Accusative	somnum	somnos	Sleep, many sleeps (direct object)
Ablative	somno	somnis	with sleep (preposition)

 

A 2^nd declension neuter word we can use is Bellum, belli. 

Bellus, belli n. War

Case	Singular	Plural	Translation
Nominative	bellum	bella	War, wars (subject)
Genitive	belli	bellorum	Of war, of wars (possession)
Dative	bello	bellis	To/for war (indirect object)
Accusative	bellum	bella
			War, wars (direct object)
Ablative	bello	bellis	With war, with wars (preposition)

 

One last twist of the 2^nd declension are words that end in –ius in the nomnative singular.  In those cases, the genitive sincular is truncated to one –i instead of –ii. An example:

 

gladius, gladi. nm., sword.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	gladius	gladii
Genitive	gladi	gladiorum
Dative	gladio	gladiis
Accusative	gladium	gladios
Ablative	gladio	gladiis

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The third declension can sometimes be a little difficult and confusing, but after looking here, you should have little or no problems declining them.  For third stem masculine and feminine nouns, the form is very simple.  All the nouns that are masculine in this case end in –is. You can recognize feminine nouns by seeing that they will end in –tas, -tatis in thee nomnative and genitive singular.   First, we’ll start with the masculine and feminine using the masculine word dux, ducis.

 

dux, ducis m. Leader

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	Dux	duces
Genitive	Ducis	Ducum
Dative	Duci	ducibus
Accusative	Ducem	Ducibus
Ablative	Duce	ducibus

 

Our 3^rd declension neuter word will be caput, capitis.

 

Caput, capitis n. head

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	Caput	Capita
Genitive	Capitis	Capitum
Dative	Capiti	Capitibus
Accusative	Caput	Capita
Ablative	Capite	capitibus

 

The twist in this declension is the –i stem.  These differ from other third declension nouns in that they take the ending -ium in the genitive plural. They may sometimes also take the endings -im, -i, -is insteaad of the endings -em, -e, -es iin the accusative singular, ablative singular, and the accusative plural, respectively.  I-stem words are recognized by being parasyllabic(same number of syllables in the nomnative and genitive singular), and having the same form in the nomnative and genitive.

 

Our example will use civis, civis for the masculine and mare, maris for the neuter.

 

Civis, civis m. citizen

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	Civis	Cives
Genitive	Civium	Civis
Dative	Civi	Civibus
Accusative	Civem	Cives
Ablative	Cive	civibus

 

Mare, maris n. sea

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	mare	Maria
Genitive	Maris	Marum
Dative	mari	Maribus
Accusative	Mare	Maria
Ablative	Mari	maribus

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The fourth and fifth declensions are very short and easy, and not many words are in either case.  On a personal note, I have only seen a 5^th declension word used a few times, and that was in very advanced literature that you will hopefully have the privilege to experience.  It is, however hardly needed, but it is important to learn.  All words in the 4^th declension are masculine, except for two: manus and domus because in ancient Rome, women worked in the house (domus) with their hands (manus). Alternately, all words in the 5^th declension are feminine (except for dies which is maculine when referring to specific days) and there is no masculine construction in that declension.

 

Gradus, gradus m. step

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	Gradus	Gradus
Genitive	Gradus	graduum
Dative	Gradui	Gradibus
Accusative	Gradum	Gradus
Ablative	Gradu	gradibus

 

Res, rei f. things

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	Res	Res
Gen.	Rei	Rerum
Dative	Rei	Rebus
Accusative	Rem	Res
Ablative	Re	rebus

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One thing that was not able to be taught here are the macrons that go over each letter in the different cases.  Hopefully, your Latin teacher will be able to teach you this, or if you can buy a good dictionary, it will have the macrons in the back of the book.  The macrons are often how you can tell what case a noun is in, and also tells you the pronunciation of the letter it is over.  Also, there are other cases that were not discussed in this lesson. Please bear in mind that this site is still under construction somewhat, but we plan on having tutorials that cover the vocative and locative cases at a later time.

 

Final notes:

• All the words in the first declension are feminine except the P.A.I.N words(words that begin with each of the respective letters, Poeta, agricola, incola, nauta…etc).
• Some second declension masculine nouns have nomnative –er. Ex: puer, ager; of these, some keep the –e in their stem, eg. Pueri, others drop it, eg. Agri.

 

Tutorial written by LDRS AAC Mercury. 04/04/02.