Salvete Omnes!

Let’s jump right in. Last week’s homework answers are below:

Translate from Latin to English

1. clamas = you shout
2.  es = you are
3.  times = you are afraid
4.  habetis =you guys are holding/having
5.  Uocant =They call

Translate from English to Latin

6. It has =habet
7. They enter =intrant
8. You (s.) are afraid =times
9. I do hide =Celo
10. We are carrying = portamus

I hope that makes sense to everyone; if not please leave a comment! So let’s dive in!

ENGLISH GRAMMAR CRASH COURSE

In English, we known nouns as a person, place, thing or idea. We use nouns every day, all the time, in every sentence. For example, I ate the waiter’s chicken with a fork.

This particular sentence has four nouns. However, the nouns all have different roles within the sentence. By roles, I am referring to their grammatical purpose of this sentence or the case of nouns.

The subject of the sentence is “I.”

The direct object (that the verb,ate, is referring to) is “chicken.”

The indirect object (that correlate to the direct object) is “fork.”

The possessive noun (who the chicken belonged to) is “waiter’s.”

Now, this is -of course- of simplifying things. But, I hope if you have some or very little grammar understanding that this little dissection has made sense. Now, although all the nouns in the sentence are being used as different parts of the sentence – most of them are spelled the same regardless of their place.  For example, if the noun chicken was the subject or indirect object – in English, we would still spell it as chicken. Therefore, the noun “chicken” spelling does not change based on its use in English.  

This is not true in LATIN.

In Latin, nouns change the way they are spelled depending on their purpose in the sentence. We see this, in English, with the word “I” and “me.” “I” is usually only used as the subject while “me” is used as the direct object or indirect object. For example: I [subject] called the penguin [direct object] to follow me [indirect object].  You wouldn’t say “Me called the penguin to follow I” – that is very poor English.

LATIN NOUNS CASES & GENDER

In Latin, nouns have cases which are as follows [there is a LOCATIVE & VOCATIVE which will be discussed at a later session]:

NOMINATIVE =SUBJECT OF THE SENTENCE

ACCUSATIVE = USUALLY DIRECT OBJECT

GENITIVE =POSSESSIVE

DATIVE = INDIRECT OBJECT

ABLATIVE = USED WITH PREPOSITIONS & OTHER PURPOSES

Please review the following video for more information on this part of English Grammar if this is still difficult to understand.  Now, in addition to nouns changing their spelling depending on their cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and ablative) – nouns also have genders. This means nouns may be feminine, masculine, or neuter. In terms of noun’s gender – sometimes it is easy to assume such the word daughter in Latin “filia” is a feminine noun, the word serrus meaning male slave is masculine. Not all nouns are so clear cut as the Latin words for stage “scaena” and garland “corona” are feminine but both men and women use these items. In addition, neuter nouns are difficult to guess like “aurum” meaning gold.  So before you assume you can guess the gender of noun based on it meaning – STOP!

 

The way Latin students know the gender of a noun is based on a few things, but for today’s lesson, it is the way the noun is spelled depending on its case. Now, before you start freaking out – it is not as crazy as it sounds.

 

Let’s review two types of Latin nouns:

1st Declension Nouns (feminine nouns 99% of the time ) like “Aul-a” means “pot”

The endings for these nouns are in bold while the root of the noun is not.

Case (singular)	Abbreviation	Case (Plural)	English Translation
Nominative (nom.)	aula	Nominative (nom.	aulae
Accusative (acc.)	aulam	Accusative (acc.)	aulas
Genitive (gen.)	aulae	Genitive (gen.)	aularum
Dative (dat.)	aulae	Dative (dat.)	aulis
Ablative (abl.)	aula	Ablative (abl.)	aulis

 

2nd Declension Nouns (masculine nouns 99% of the time ) like “coqu-us” means “cook”

Case (singular)	Abbreviation	Case (Plural)	English Translation
Nominative (nom.)	coquus	Nominative (nom.	coqui
Accusative (acc.)	coquum	Accusative (acc.)	coquos
Genitive (gen.)	coqui	Genitive (gen.)	coquorum
Dative (dat.)	coquo	Dative (dat.)	coquis
Ablative (abl.)	coquo	Ablative (abl.)	coquis

Now, I know this is  a lot to take in so I will show you a few sentence examples:

• “Ego porto aulam” which means “I carry the/a pot”

Ego is the NOMINATIVE case, porto is the verb for the 1st person singular (only used for the subject “I”), and aulam is the direct object as you can see it is in the accusative singular case. Please Note: that there is no formal word in Latin for the English articles “the, a, or an” and it is implied as needed in the sentence.

• “Aulas porto” which means  “I carry the pots”

The word “ego” meaning “I” is missing from this sentence. However, the verb shows me from last week’s blog that this is a 1st person singular meaning on its own “I carry.” This is very important to remember as Latin rarely use ego for I but instead infers the subject by the verb. “Aulas” according to the chart is in the accusative plural meaning it is a plural (i.e. more than one) direct object.

• “sum filia” which means “I am a/the daughter.”

“Sum” is the 1st person singular of the verb meaning “I am.” “Filia is also in the nominative case. This is because the verb “to be” (more on this next month) is a complement to the subject. This will only happen with the verb “to be” in Latin.

• “Habeo aulas coquorum” which means “I have the cooks’ pots”

“Habeo” is the 1st person singular meaning “I have”, “aulas” is plural accusative meaning “pots” and “coquorum” is plural genitive meaning “of the cooks.”

PREPOSITIONS

In English, there are several prepositions that placed in front of nouns like in, into, towards, with, to, about, etc.. In  Latin,, prepositions require nouns in certain cases.

• “Ad + accusative” = Towards
• “In + accusative”  = into or onto
• “In + ablative” = in or on

Sentence Example:

• “Coronas in aula celo” means “ I hide the garlands in the pot.”

Let’s break it down. “Celo” is a verb meaning “I hide” since it is 1st person singular (again review the previous post about verbs and ending). “Coronas is a first declension noun because it has an ending with “-as” which is accusative plural which means it is the direct plural object. So far we have – “I hide the garlands” now for the new part “in aula” meaning “in the pot” since aula is the ablative. Now I know what some of you are thinking…

“It could be a nominative” – but the verb does not work for “aula” to be the nominative (or subject). If you tried to translate it – it would say “A pot, I hide, into the garlands”  which sounds okay in English. BUT!!!!  If “Aula” is nominative meaning the “I” – then, in the sentence “I” is referring to pot as if the pot was alive and could think and hide things. The English sentence I constructed up above makes it sound like “I, a human being, hid a pot into the garlands.” If that was the case the Latin sentence would look like “in coronas aulam celo.”

Did you notice I moved the “in” to be in front of the noun it went with? This will be a common practice for most Latin unless you are doing advanced poetry. So the moral of the story is to pay CLOSE CLOSE CLOSE attention to the verb ending, the nominative/subject of the sentence, and all possible cases for verbs.

This month’s homework:

Vocabulary bank:

Please note that nouns are usually shown with the nominative singular endings and then a comma with the genitivie singular endings. 1 stands for first declension and 2 stands for 2nd declension. 

Aul-a,ae 1st fem. = pot	Scaena, ae 1f= stage	Et = and
Coqu-us, i 2nd mas =cook	Sub+ ablative =under	Cur = why
Clamo = I shout	Uoco = I call	Sed = but
Intro = I enter	Timeo = I fear	Semper = always
Te = you (acc. sing)	Si = if	Plenus, a, um + genitive = full of
Seruus, i 1m= slave-man	Serua, ae 1f – salve-woman

Translate from Latin to English

1. Coquus aulam filiarum portat.
2.  Tu clamas, aulas celo.
3.  Cur me times?
4.  Coronas et aulas coqui celant sub scaena.
5.  Fila ad scaenam intrat.

Translate from English to Latin

6.  They hide the pot, the cooks are afraid.
7. Why are you carrying the pots?
8. The pots are full of garlands.
9. The cook calls the female slaves.
10. We hide the garlands in the pots.

 

Until next time!