LATIN GRAMMAR GUIDE STAGE I
What is the Latin Noun System?
What is meant by Case?
Latin, unlike English, uses cases to show what role a noun plays in a sentence. These are shown by the ending
at the end of the noun stem.
Main 5 (These are the ones present in most grammar tables; usually in this order).
Case
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Ablative
Use
Subject of sentence; predicate nouns; lemma (dictionary form)
Possession. Can go before or after the noun it modifies
Indirect object; special uses; object of certain prepositions.
Direct object; special uses; object of certain prepositions.
Special uses; object of certain prepositions.
Last 2: These are less common and their forms often coincide with other cases.
Case
Uses
Vocative Used for direct address
Locative Used to show location.1
What is a Declension?
In Latin, a noun belongs to one of 5 possible declensions. Each has its own distinctive set of endings, though the
forms of different case endings are often identical.
Declension
1st
2nd
3rd
3rd “i” stem
4th
5th
Marking Letter
“a” stem
“o” stem
consonant stem
“i” stem
“u” stem
“e” stem
How does one decline a Noun?
To decline a noun, one must first find the stem of that particular noun. In Latin, the stem of the noun is found by
looking at its dictionary form, or lemma. A noun in a Latin dictionary will look like this:
Patria, patriae: (feminine, first declension): homeland; fatherland.
The first word (in this case patria) is the nominative singular. The second word (in this case patriae) is in the
genitive singular.
1
Frequently appears with the words domus, rūs, cities, towns and small islands.
To find the noun stem: look at the genitive singular, remove the genitive singular ending (in this case it is –ae)
and you are left with the noun stem. It is important to do this only with the genitive, because in Latin the
nominative case is often irregular. (this means it does not follow the usual pattern)
In this case, the stem of this word is patri-. Now that we know this we can add the case ending to decline the
noun.
What is the Latin Verb System?
What is meant by Tense?
In Latin, verb tenses (which tell you at what time the action is happening) are indicated by endings.
There are two separate systems of Latin verbs. They are called the present system and the perfect system. Each
has three tenses.
Present System
Tense
Recommended Translation
Tense
Recommended Translation
Present
I verb, I am verbing, I do verb.
Perfect
I verbed, I have verbed.
Imperfect I was verbing, I did verb, I used to verb. Pluperfect
I had verbed.
Future
I will verb, I shall verb.
Future Perfect I will have verbed, I shall have verbed.
Perfect System (Note: These are all past tenses)
What are Principal Parts of Verbs?
Latin has 4 principal parts for verbs. Not all verbs have all 4, but all have at least 2. By memorizing all the
principal parts of a verb you will be able to recognize the verb in whatever form it appears. The fourth principal
part is a different part of speech. It is called a participle, which is a verbal adjective. This means that it can
function both as a verb and as an adjective, depending on the context.
Principal
Part
First
Second
Third
Fourth
Parsing
First Person, Singular, Present, Indicative,
Active.
Infinitive.
First Person, Singular, Perfect, Indicative,
Active.
Supine; also known as the Perfect Passive
Participle.
Latin
Example
Laudō
Laudāre
Laudāvī
Laudātum
English Translation
I praise, I am praising, I do
praise.
To praise.
I praised, I have praised.
(A thing which) has been
praised.
When you look up a verb in a Latin dictionary, it will usually have all 4 principal parts present. So it would look
like this:
Laudō, Laudāre, Laudāvī, Laudātum (1): To praise.
The number “1” following the principal parts shows to which of the conjugations this verb belongs.
Sometimes you will see something like this:
Laudō (1): To praise.
This entry doesn’t have all of the principal parts. This is because the 4 principal parts of this verb are regular.
This means that they perfectly follow the predictable pattern for verb endings of this conjugation. Therefore,
you will always see at least the first principal part in a dictionary. For this reason, the first principal part is the
lemma of the verb.
What is a Verb Conjugation?
In Latin each verb has a group to which it belongs. This group is called a conjugation. There are 5 in total. They
are distinguished from each other by the marking vowel of the second principal part. These are:
Conjugation Number
1st
2nd
3rd
3rd -io
4th
Marking Vowel
ā (long a); laudāre
ē (long e); sedēre
e (short e); iacere
e (short e); facere2
ī (long i); dormīre
What is meant by the Person and Number of Verbs?
In Latin, verbs are either 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person, and are either singular or plural. In English this looks like this:
Person
1st
2nd
3rd
Singular
I verb
You verb
He, She, It verbs
Plural
We verb
You (all) verb
They verb
Each tense in Latin has its own set of endings.
How does one conjugate a Verb?
To conjugate a Latin verb, you must first find the verb stem. To do this, we need the 2nd principal part. Let’s use
laudo again.
The second principal part for this verb is laudāre.
Now we need to remove the infinitive ending, which in this case is –re.
This leaves us with the verb stem laudā. To this we add the endings for the tense we want in order to conjugate
the verb.
For example, to say “he praises”, we would write laudā + -t (the ending for the third person singular) to form
laudāt.
What is Latin Syntax?
Latin tends to follow a different word order than English does. The standard English word order is subject-verbobject; as in the sentence “The dog bites the man”. Latin tends to follow a subject-object-verb word order; as in
the sentence “canis hominem edit”. The verb is often found at the end of the sentence, but because of the nature
of Latin as a highly inflected language, word order is flexible and the words can appear in any order. Therefore
it is important to be able to recognize the correct cases of nouns and tenses of verbs, as sometimes Latin
sentences can become quite long.
2
This classification of verbs has an –io instead of –o in the first principal part.