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Trista	Tuesday 11th of January 2005 07:48:55 AM
Are you just starting Latin? Look here for help. - Hey, For those of you who are just starting Latin, I created a website that has exercises and lessons for you to look at, feel free to drop by if interested. www.angelfire.com/cantina/trista
Brita	Tuesday 11th of January 2005 09:35:54 AM
- nifty, thanks!! could you put the emphasised syllable in caps, or something? hehe i like the rule: "latin is not boring" is there going to be more? if so, looking forward to it :)
Trista	Wednesday 12th of January 2005 06:35:08 AM
Up and coming! - Yes, there will be more as I learn it myself, I try to update the site daily. *thinks hard* Anyway, guess I forgot to add in the rules, that the second to last syllable is always emphasised-in a word with two syllables that would be the first syllable. :)
bobdude	Monday 09th of May 2005 12:06:27 AM
Learn Latin-here you go-start reading - Learn Latin (In Depth) Latinum Cognosces Table of Contents Chapter Content Preamble and Preface by Dale A. Grote 1 First and Second Conjugation Verbs: Indicative, Imperative, and Infinitive 2 Cases; First Declension; Agreement of Adjectives 3 Second Declension; Masculine Nouns and Adjectives; Word Order 4 Neuters of the Second Declension; Summary of Adjectives; Present Indicative of Sum; Predicate Nouns and Adjectives 5 First and Second Conjugations: Future Indicative Active; Adjectives of the First and Second Declension in -er 6 Sum: Future and Imperfect Indicative; Possum: Present, Future, and Imperfect Indicative; Complementary Infinitive 7 Third Declension: Nouns 8 Third Conjugation (duco): Present Infinitive, Present and Future Indicative, Present Imperative Active 9 Demonstrative Pronouns: Hic, Ille, Iste 10 Fourth Conjugation and -io Verbs of the Third: Present and Future Indicative, Present Imperative and Active Infinitive 11 Personal Pronouns Ego and Tu; Pronouns Is and Idem 12 Perfect System Active of All Verbs; Principal Parts 13 Reflexive Pronouns and Possessives; the Intensive 'Ipse' 14 I-Stem Nouns of the Third Declension; Ablative of Means, Manner, and Accompaniment 15 The Imperfect Indicative Active; Ablative of Time 16 Adjectives of the Third Declension 17 The Relative Pronoun 18 The Passive Voice for the 1st and 2nd Conjugations in the Present System; Ablative of Agent 19 Perfect Passive System of All Verbs; Interrogative Pronouns and Adjectives 20 Fourth Declension; Ablatives of Place from Which and Separation 21 Third and Fourth Conjugations: Passive Voice of Indicative and Present Infinitive 22 Fifth Declension; Summary of Ablatives 23 Participles 24 Ablative Absolute; Passive Periphrastic; The Dative of Agent 25 All Infinitives Active and Passive; Indirect Statement 26 Comparison of Adjectives; Declension of Comparatives 27 Special and Irregular Comparison of Adjectives 28 Subjunctive: Present Active and Passive; Jussive; Purpose 29 Imperfect Subjunctive; Present and Imperfect Subjunctive of Sum and Possum; The Result Clause 30 Perfect and Pluperfect Subjunctive Active and Passive; Sequence of Tenses; Indirect Questions 31 Cum with the Subjunctive; Fero 32 Adverbs: Formation and Comparison; Volo 33 Conditions 34 Deponent Verbs; Ablative with Special Deponents 35 Dative With Special Verbs; Dative With Compounds CHAPTER 1 "First and Second Conjugation Verbs: Indicative, Imperative, and Infinitive" VERBS: THE BASICS OF CONJUGATION Let's start simply: a verb is a word which indicates action or state of being. Everyone ought to know that. Look at some of the different forms of a simple verb in English, the verb "to see": GROUP I GROUP II GROUP III I see. I saw. I am seen. I do see. I was seen. I am seeing. I will be seen. I will see. I should have been seen. I should be seeing. I would see. See. I want to see. And so on; there are several left out. Look at the first group for now. You can detect something interesting going on here. You have a basic form of the verb -- "see" -- and it's undergoing changes. One kind of change is that different words are put before it, another is the "-ing" suffix attached to the end, and another is the addition of a suffix "-s" when you want to say "he/she/it sees". You can see that the verb "to see" has a basic form, which is being modified slightly to show that the verb is being used in a different way. This modification of a verb to show different aspects or conditions of the action is called "conjugation" (kahn juh GAY chion), and a verb is said to "conjugate" (KAHN juh gate) when it's modified to exhibit these different conditions. A verb, therefore, has a basic form or set of forms, which then conjugate in order to change the way its meaning is to be understood in a particular context. These basic forms contain the core meaning of the verb, but the way the action is being applied and the circumstances under which the action is changing. Now look at the second group -- it's really a group of one. Here you have an entirely different form: "saw". How do you know that it's a part of the verb "to see?" From your experience with English, of course. This form of the verb is an entirely different stem, yet it's still just a variation of the basic verb "to see". So a verb can change its form entirely and still be a part of the same family of meaning. So also with the third group. "Seen" is another stem of the basic verb "to see", and your native English sense tells you it's merely a variation of a verb you already know: "to see". Again, we can put all kinds of words in front to conjugate it, but with this stem, no changes actually affect the stem itself. There's no such form as "seening", for example. Now let's try an experiment. Suppose you're not an English speaker and you come across the word "saw" while you're reading something. You don't know what it is, so you try to look it up in the dictionary just as it is: "saw". Unless you have a very unusual dictionary you won't find it. Why not? Because "saw" is a variation of a more basic form. In the same way, would you expect to find an entry in a dictionary for the word "stones?" Of course not, because "stones" is just the plural form of "stone", a form you can easily deduce from the basic form "stone", if you know the rules of English grammar. So before you can use a dictionary, you already have to know something about the language. And that's entirely understandable. How big would a dictionary have to be to list all the possible varieties of every word in the language? Consequently, before you look up a word in a dictionary, you must first reduce it to a form under which the dictionary will list it, and that often takes patience and some mental effort. Let's go back to the verb "to see". It has three different stems in its conjugation -- "see, saw, seen" -- and to use the verb intelligently you must know them all and you must know the rules governing their use. We call these forms, the "principal parts" of the verb. You'll notice in English the way these principal parts are conjugated is by piling up all kinds of words in front of them. These words change the aspect of the action. To sum up, to use any verb fully, you must know two things: (1) all the principal parts of the verb, and (2) the rules governing the conjugation of English verbs. This is also true of Latin verbs. LATIN VERBS: THE BASICS As you may have guessed, Latin verbs have different rules governing the way they conjugate. For the most part -- almost exclusively -- Latin verbs conjugate by attaching endings to the stems themselves, without all the separate helping words put in front of the stem as in English to tell you how to understand the action. So for a Latin verb, you must learn two things: (1) the stems, and (2) how the stems are modified at their ends to show different conditions under which the action is occurring. Let's look at English again. Here is the conjugation of the verb "to see" in the present tense. SINGULAR PLURAL I see we see you see you see he, she, it, sees they see With the exception of the form "sees", the differences among these forms is made by the preceding word. In this instance, the change is in the person who is performing the action. Now look at the Latin translation for the verb English verb "to see" with these modifications. LATIN ENGLISH 1st video I see 2nd vides you see 3rd videt he/she/it sees 1st videmus we see 2nd videtis you see 3rd vident they see As I told you before, Latin conjugates its verbs by attaching endings to the root of the verb itself, and here you can see it happening. The common feature of the verb "to see" in Latin is the stem "vide-" and to show changes in person and number, Latin adds a suffix. These suffixes are called the "personal endings", because they indicate the person and the number of the conjugated form of the verb. Let's set these personal endings out: 1st person -o = I 2nd person -s = you (singular) 3rd person -t = he, she, it 1st person -mus = we 2nd person -tis = you (plural) 3rd person -nt = they Now try your hand at conjugating some other Latin verbs. The verb meaning "to warn, advise" in Latin has the stem "mone-"; the verb meaning "to be strong" in Latin has the stem "vale-"; and the verb meaning "to owe, ought" in Latin has the stem "debe-". Translate the following into Latin. we owe, ought debemus they see ____________________ she advises ____________________ you (pl.) are strong ____________________ they warn ____________________ you (sg.) are strong ____________________ I owe, ought ____________________ we see ____________________ CONJUGATIONS OF LATIN VERBS You now know the single most important characteristic of Latin nouns: they conjugate by adding suffixes to a stem. You also now know the most common kind of suffix: the personal endings. Next you need to know something more about the stems. There are four groups of Latin verbs, called "conjugations", determined by the final vowel attached to the end of the stem. The verbs you've been working with have stems which end in "-e". Verbs whose stems end in "-e" are called "2nd conjugation" verbs. If, however, the stem of the verb ends in "-a" then it's called a "1st conjugation" verb. Verbs whose stem ends in short "-e" are called "3rd conjugation". And verbs whose stem ends in "-i" are called "4th conjugation". Like this: 1st 2nd 3rd 4th lauda- vale- duc- veni- ama- vide- ag- senti- cogita- mone- carp- audi- The first several chapters of Wheelock are concerned only with the first and second conjugations, so for now we'll postpone any further discussion of the third and fourth conjugation. But for now, you need to recognize that the principal difference between the four conjugations of Latin verbs is in the vowel that comes between the stem and the personal endings. All four conjugations follow the same rules for conjugating: stem (which includes the characteristic stem vowel) + personal endings. You have already worked with second conjugation verbs. Now let's have a look at an example of a first conjugation verb. We'll use the verb "to love" as the example, which has the stem "ama-". So "ama-" means "love" but to use it in a sentence, we have to add the personal endings. The stem of the verb is "ama-", so to conjugate it, we just add the personal endings to it, following the same rules that apply to second conjugation verbs. Fill in the stem and personal endings in the blanks on the following chart but hold off filling in the conjugated forms for now. STEM + PERSONAL ENDING = CONJUGATED FORM 1st ________ + __________ = _______________ 2nd ________ + __________ = _______________ 3rd ________ + __________ = _______________ 1st ________ + __________ = _______________ 2nd ________ + __________ = _______________ 3rd ________ + __________ = _______________ Now for the conjugated forms. If you follow the rules of conjugation that apply for second conjugation verbs, you should write the form "amao" for the first person singular. But listen to how easily the two vowels "a" and "o" can be simplified into a single "o" sound. Say "ao" several times quickly and you'll see that the two sounds are made in the same place in the mouth. Over time, Latin simplified the sound "ao" to just "o". The final written form is "amo", not "amao". So write "amo" for "I love". Aside from this small irregularity, however, the personal endings are attached directly to the stem without any alteration or loss of the stem vowel. Fill in the rest of the conjugated forms. (If you're unsure of yourself, check your work against the paradigm on page 3 of Wheelock.) Now conjugate another paradigm of a second conjugation verbs: "mone-" STEM + PERSONAL ENDING = CONJUGATED FORM 1st ________ + __________ = _______________ 2nd ________ + __________ = _______________ 3rd ________ + __________ = _______________ 1st ________ + __________ = _______________ 2nd ________ + __________ = _______________ 3rd ________ + __________ = _______________ THE ENGLISH PRESENT TENSES Look at the following conjugated forms of the English verb "to see". I see. I am seeing. I do see. Each of these forms refers to present time -- and are therefore present tenses -- but each is different. We're so accustomed to these different present tenses in English that we can hardly explain what the different meanings are, even though we're instantly aware that there is a distinction being made. Try to explain the differences among "I see", "I am seeing" and "I do see". It's difficult, but these different present tenses are essential to the way we speak. In reality English is one of the few languages which has these three present tenses, and it's very hard to foreign students of English to learn how and when to use them. "I see" is called the Simple Present tense; "I am seeing" is called the Present Progressive; and "I do see" is called the Present Emphatic. Now try to come up with the differences. The point of this is that Latin has only one present tense. So, when we see "laudas", for example, it can be translated into English as "you praise", "you do praise", or "you are praising". We have to let our native sense of the simple present, the present progressive, and the present emphatic tell us which to use. THE IMPERATIVE Another conjugated form of Latin verbs is the "imperative" mood, or the direct command. Its name is its definition. It's how you turn a verb into a direct command: "Look here", "Watch out", "Stop that", etc. To form the imperative mood of any Latin verb, follow these rules: Second Person Singular stem Second Person Plural stem + te Form the imperative mood of the following Latin verbs: lauda- singular ____________________ plural ____________________ mone- singular ____________________ plural ____________________ THE INFINITIVE Verb forms which specify no person -- 1st, 2nd, or 3rd -- we call "infinite" or "infinitive", which means, literally, "without boundary". That is to say, the form is not bounded by or limited to a certain person. Theoretically, there are many verb forms which are "infinite", but in common usage the word "infinitive" is generally limited to forms which are translated into English as "to x" (where "x" is the meaning of the verb). To form the infinitive, a "-re" suffix is added to the stem. lauda + re = laudare (to praise) mone + re = monere (to warn) DICTIONARY CONVENTIONS FOR VERBS As you can see, each verb has at least six different forms (there are many, many more which you'll learn later), and, for obvious reasons, it would be impossible for a dictionary to list all six of these possibilities under separate entries. That is, you can't look up "laudant" just as it's here, anymore than you could look up "they are saying" under "they" in an English dictionary. You have to strip the conjugated form of the verb down to the form under which the dictionary will give it to you. For the English "they are saying", obviously, you would look up "say", because you know the conventions an English dictionary uses for listing an English verb. What are the conventions for a Latin dictionary? If you see a form like "laudant" in a text you're reading and want to look it up, how do you do it? What is its "dictionary" form? The dictionary form for a Latin verb is not the stem, but the first person singular. This means that when you want to look up "laudant" you have to look it up under the conjugated form "laudo", not under its raw stem "lauda-". What you have to do to look up a Latin verb, therefore, is to imagine what the verb looks like in the first person singular and look it up under that. There is no reason it has to be like this; Latin dictionaries could have adopted any other of a number of different conventions for listing verbs, but this just happens to be the way it is. A consequence of this is that the first personal singular of a verb is considered to be the basic form of the verb. So, I'll say, for example, "The Latin verb for "to see" is "video", which is really saying "The Latin verb for "to see" is 'I see.'" Again, this is just conventional, but it's how it's done. To repeat, in order to look a verb up in the dictionary, you first have to reduce it to its first person singular form. In the case of the conjugated form "laudant" you would follow this process. (1) The "-nt" suffix is the third person plural personal ending, so you take it off; that leaves you with "lauda-". (2) You remember that verbs conjugate by adding personal endings to the stem, so "lauda-" is the stem. But you can't look it up under the stem alone, because a dictionary lists verbs under the first person singular. You must reconstruct the first person singular to look this verb up. (3) Next ask yourself what the conjugation of a verb like "lauda-" is going to be, first or second conjugation? Since the final vowel of the stem is "-a-", the verb you're looking at is a first conjugation verb. And what does the first person singular or a first conjugation verb look like? It's "lauda + o = laudo" (since the "a" and the "o" contract to just "o"). So we say that "laudant" is from "laudo", just as we might say in English "seen" is from "to see". (4) Now you've simplified the verb to something you can look it up under -- "laudo" -- and the translation is "to praise". (5) The second entry for a verb in the Latin dictionary is its infinitive form. After "laudo", therefore, you see "laudare". Since you know that an infinitive is the stem plus the ending "-re", you can easily see the true stem of the verb simply by dropping off the final "-re" infinitive ending. This confirms the fact that the verb you're looking up is a first conjugation verb. (6) Now translate "laudant". With the personal ending brought back in the translation is "they praise" (or "they are praising", or "they do praise"). I know this may seem tedious at first, but concentrate on internalizing each one of these steps. You'll benefit immensely when the grammar becomes more complicated. The moral of all this is that you should never go browsing around in the dictionary hoping to find something that might match the word you're looking up. You must think carefully about what you're looking for before you turn the first page of the dictionary. (You'll hear me say this repeatedly.) VOCABULARY PUZZLES debeo, debere This verb has an apparently odd combinations of meanings -- "to owe; should, must, ought" -- until we remember that our English verb "ought" is really an archaic past tense of the verb "to owe". As with the English verb "ought", the Latin verb "debeo" is often followed by an infinitive to complete its meaning: "I ought to see" = "Debeo videre". An infinitive which completes the meaning of another verb is called a "complementary infinitive". servo, servare Despite its appearance, this verb doesn't mean "to serve". Be careful with this one. CHAPTER 2 "Cases; First Declension; Agreement of Adjectives" CASES AND INFLECTION Consider the following sentence: "The girl saw the dog". How can you tell that this sentence does not mean that the dog is seeing the girl? The answer is obvious to an English speaker. "Girl" comes before the verb, and "dog" comes after it, and this arrangement tells us that the "girl" is performing the action of verb, and the "dog" is receiving the action. We say that the one who is performing the action of the verb is the "subject" of the verb. So "girl" is the "subject" of "saw". The dog, however, is the "object" of the verb, since it's the object of the action. And in English, we generally show these functions -- subject and object -- by position relative to the verb. The subject of the verb tends to come before the verb, the object tends to come after it. But position isn't the only way we show which word is the subject and object of a verb. Now consider this sentence: "Him I like, them I despise". Obviously this sentence has an usual arrangement for rhetorical purposes, but how can you tell who is doing what to whom? Even though English grammar shows grammatical relationship between words in a sentence mainly by position, in many instances a change in the word itself provides you additional help. The word "him", although it comes first in the sentence, is not the subject because its form -- "him" instead of "he" -- is not the one used to indicate that it's the subject of the verb. We use the form "he" to show that. Furthermore, the word "I" is the form we use when the first person is subject of the verb. Hence, the words "he" and "I" change their forms as their grammatical function in the sentence changes. The change in form of a word to show grammatical functions is called "inflection". The English personal pronouns change quite a lot to show you how they're being used in the sentence. Watch. FORM FUNCTION I subject my possessor (it owns something me object (something is being done to it) First Person Pronoun we subject our possessor us object you subject your possessor you object Second Person Pronoun you subject your possessor you object he,she,it subject his,her,its possessor him,her,it object Third Person Pronoun they subject their possessor them object This inflection (change of form to show grammatical function) in the pronouns is very useful for helping us to understand each other -- although, as you can see, the second person pronoun "you, etc" doesn't inflect nearly so much as the first and third. The plural forms are even identical to the singular forms. We can still get by. In English, inflection is rather limited, and we rely on position mainly to tell us what the words in the sentence are doing to each other. The only grammatical functions that involve a change in form for all nouns is the possessive case and the plural forms, where we attach an "-s" to the end of the word. (In written English we even include an apostrophe "'" mark to help us see the difference between a pluralized noun and a noun that's in the possessive case.) For example SINGULAR PLURAL apple subject apples subject apple's possessor apples' possessor apple object apples object Watch how we combine position with inflection in English to make sense to one another. As you can see, position is the principal guide. "These apples' [plural, possessor] cores are hard, but apples [plural, subject] are usually soft. When you [singular, subject] buy apples [plural, object], you [singular, subject] should first pick up each apple [object, singular] and bounce it [singular, object] off the floor several times. Then check its [singular, possessor] skin. If it [singular, subject] is bruised, discretely put it [singular, object] back with the other apples [plural, object], making certain that no one [singular, subject] is watching you [singular, object]". Unlike English, languages which rely primarily on inflection of words to show grammatical relationship are called "inflected" languages. English, though it has some inflection, is not an inflected language. Latin, however, is an inflected language, because it relies almost entirely on changes in the words themselves to indicate their grammatical function in a sentence. The different grammatical functions a word can have in a sentence is called "case". In English there are three recognizable different cases, that is grammatical functions, a word can have: the subjective case, the possessive case, and the objective case. So we say there are three cases in English. In Latin there are six difference cases. Here are the Latin cases. (Don't try to memorize them all at once here. Just read through the list; there will be plenty of time to firm up your familiarity of them.) LATIN APPROXIMATE ENGLISH EQUIVALENT Nominative (Subjective) Genitive (Possessive Case) Dative (Object of words like "to" or "for") Accusative (Objective Case) Ablative (Adverbial Usages: "by", "with") Vocative (Direct Address) We'll look at the way these cases are used in Latin in the next part of these notes, although some of them won't be difficult at all: the nominative, genitive, and accusative cases are almost the same as their English counterparts. The ablative, dative and vocative will need some explanation. Before then, however, let's look at how a Latin noun inflects to show all these different cases. Let's look at some English pronouns which inflect to show the three different cases. Do you remember "they, their, them?" The pronoun is inflecting through its different cases, but we can definitely spot a pattern of similarity among the three forms. There is a definite root of the word. The root (that is, the part of the word that contains the meaning of the word) is "the-" to which then the endings "-y", "-ir" and "-m". So we could say that the word is inflecting by adding certain case endings to a stem. The stem contains the core of the meaning of the word, and the endings merely inflect or alter its grammar. This is precisely how Latin nouns show their different cases: they add additional letters to the end of the basic form of the word. This basic form that does not change throughout its inflection is called the "stem". There are, consequently, two parts of a Latin word that you must note: the stem and the case ending. The stem contains the meaning of the word and its gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter). The case ending will tell you (1) how the noun is being used in its sentence, and (2) whether the noun is singular or plural. Let's watch a the Latin noun "puella" (girl) as it inflects through its different cases: SINGULAR APPROXIMATE ENGLISH TRANSLATION NOMINATIVE puella girl GENITIVE puellae of the girl DATIVE puellae to/for the girl ACCUSATIVE puellam girl ABLATIVE puella by/with the girl VOCATIVE puella girl PLURAL NOMINATIVE puellae girls GENITIVE puellarum of the girls DATIVE puellis to/for the girls ACCUSATIVE puellas girls ABLATIVE puellis by/with the girls VOCATIVE puellae girls The stem of the Latin word is clearly visible. It's "puell-" to which different endings are being attached. The endings are: SINGULAR PLURAL NOMINATIVE -a -ae GENITIVE -ae -arum DATIVE -ae -is ACCUSATIVE -am -as ABLATIVE -a -is VOCATIVE -a -ae There are many other nouns in Latin which follow this same pattern of case endings when they inflect. This pattern of endings is called the "first declension" (deh CLEN shion) and you can see the strong presence of an "-a-". There are four other declensional patterns in Latin, but a noun will belong to only one of them. Hence we can say that "puella" is a first declension noun. The other declensions are called, not surprisingly, the second, third, fourth and fifth declension, and are distinguished form one another in part by the thematic, or characteristic, vowel that appears in its endings. REVIEW This is a lot of information to absorb in one sitting. Stop now for a while, then read through this review statement before starting on the next section of this chapter. A language whose nouns show their grammatical function in the sentence by changes in the noun itself, and not by position, is called an inflected language. The different grammatical functions a language recognizes are called cases. In English, there are three cases. They are the subjective, the possessive, and the objective. In Latin there are six cases. They are the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative and vocative cases. A Latin noun has two parts which you must note: it has a stem, which contains the noun's basic meaning and its gender; and it also has a case ending which tells you the noun's case and its number. A pattern of endings which are added to the end of a noun to show its grammatical function is called a declension. Each noun in Latin belongs to one declension. The declensions are called the first, second, third, fourth and fifth declensions. THE FIRST DECLENSION Let's have a look at another first declension noun: "pecuni-" (money). SINGULAR STEM + CASE ENDING = INFLECTED FORM N/V. pecuni + -a = _______________ GEN. pecuni + -ae = _______________ DAT. pecuni + -ae = _______________ ACC. pecuni + -am = _______________ ABL. pecuni + -a = _______________ PLURAL STEM + CASE ENDING = INFLECTED FORM N/V. pecuni + -ae = _______________ GEN. pecuni + -arum = _______________ DAT. pecuni + -is = _______________ ACC. pecuni + -as = _______________ ABL. pecuni + -is = _______________ Let's try a few more paradigms. Decline the noun "patri-" (fatherland) and vit-" (life). SINGULAR patri- vit- N/V. _______________ _______________ GEN. _______________ _______________ DAT. _______________ _______________ ACC. _______________ _______________ ABL. _______________ _______________ PLURAL N/V. _______________ _______________ GEN. _______________ _______________ DAT. _______________ _______________ ACC. _______________ _______________ ABL. _______________ _______________ GENDER All Latin nouns possess what is called "gender". That is, a noun will be masculine, feminine, or neuter. Don't confuse this kind of grammatical gender with biological gender. There is nothing biologically feminine about nouns which are grammatically feminine, nothing biologically masculine about nouns which are grammatically masculine, and nothing biologically neuter about nouns which are grammatically neuter. It's just that nouns have a feature which we call gender by convention. And this is a feature which cannot change in a noun. A noun may change its case or number, but a noun will never change its gender. This is a fixed feature, and you must be told what gender a noun is when you look it up in the dictionary. This is important to remember, because although the vast majority of first declensions nouns are feminine, not all of them are. You must memorize the gender of each noun as you would learn its meaning. DICTIONARY CONVENTIONS FOR GENDER AND DECLENSION The dictionary therefore must tell you many things about a noun you're looking up -- and you must know how the dictionary tells you what you need to know. Latin dictionaries follow the following conventions for listing nouns. (1) The first entry in the dictionary is the noun in the nominative case. (2) The second entry is the genitive singular ending. This is essential, because many of the declensions have identical nominative singular endings. There is no way to be certain, therefore, to which declension a noun belongs simply by looking at the nominative singular. But in all declensions, the genitive singular endings are different. The genitive singular ending of the first declension is "-ae", that of the second declension is "-i", that of the third is "-is", that of the fourth is "-us", and that of the fifth is "-ei" If you know the genitive singular of a noun you know what declension the noun follows. Another reason you must have the genitive singular form given to you is that the stem of the noun is often not visible in the nominative singular. Sometimes the stem changes slightly from the nominative to the other forms. Again, you cannot predict what kind of stem change will occur simply by looking at the nominative. But you will be able to see it in the genitive singular. (This kind of stem change never occurs in the first declension, but it does in the second and the third.) (3) The last entry is the gender of the noun, which cannot be deduced even if you know everything else about the noun. You must be given it. Put all this together, and typical dictionary entries for first declension noun will look like this: patria, -ae (f) pecunia, -ae (f) poeta, -ae (m) agricola, -ae (m) Now look up the following nouns in your dictionary and write out the grammatical information you are given. ENGLISH FULL ENTRY DECLENSION STEM band _________________________ _____ __________ brother _________________________ _____ __________ care _________________________ _____ __________ city _________________________ _____ __________ day _________________________ _____ __________ dread _________________________ _____ __________ TRANSLATION OF THE CASES What I'm going to give you now is just the bare outline of how these cases can be translated into English. There will be plenty of time for further refinement in the future -- and we'll have to do some refinement -- but for the time being, these guide lines will get you well on your way. NOMINATIVE CASE A noun in the nominative case is often the subject of a verb. For example, in the English sentence "The tree fell on my car", the "tree" is in the nominative case because it's the subject of the verb "fell". If this were a Latin sentence, the word tree would be in the nominative case form. The rule of thumb for now is that if you see a noun in the nominative case, try to translate it as the subject of the verb in its sentence. GENITIVE CASE This case shows that one noun belongs to another noun. The noun which is the owner is put into the genitive case. Like this in English: "The car's door is open". "Door" is the nominative case because it's the thing which is open -- it's the subject of the verb "is" -- and the door belongs to the car, so "car's" is put into the genitive case. So for now, every time you see the genitive case, translate the noun with the English preposition "of" or use the genitive marker "'s". For example, if "portae" is in the genitive case, translate it either as "the door's" or "of the door". DATIVE CASE The dative case shows that a noun is indirectly affected by the action of the sentence. Take for example, in the English sentence "George gave the ball to the girl". George is the subject of "give" and the thing George is giving is the "ball". So the thing most directly affected by George's action is the ball. It's the direct recipient of the action. But George then gave the ball to the girl, so the girl is also being affected, but only indirectly. Therefore, the girl is the "indirect object" of the action of the sentence. English can also indicate the indirect object simply by position: by putting the indirect object before the direct object. Like this: George gave the girl the ball. In Latin, the word for "girl" would be in the dative case, and so would have the dative case ending of the declension to which the word "girl" belongs. So the form would be "puellae". Again, a rough rule of thumb: when you see the dative case, try to translate it with the prepositions "to" or "for" and see which of the two makes the most sense. ACCUSATIVE CASE The noun which is directly affected by the action of a verb is put into the accusative case. In English we call this case the "direct object" which is a little more descriptive of its function. It's the direct object of some action. In the example above, the "ball" is in the accusative case because it's the direct object of George's action of giving. In Latin, therefore, the word for ball would have the characteristic accusative case ending attached to its stem. The accusative case is also used after some prepositions, but we'll look at that later. ABLATIVE CASE The ablative case is rather complicated. Let's just say for now that when you see a noun in the ablative case, translate it by using the prepositions "with" or "by". We'll study the various meanings of the ablative case separately in later chapters. VOCATIVE CASE If you want to call someone or something by name to get some attention, then you use the vocative case. "Dog, get out of the house!" "Dog" is in the vocative case. The form of the vocative case -- that is, the ending you attach to the stem to form the case -- is almost always identical to the nominative form of the word. For that reason, the nominative and vocative forms are often listed together in a declensional pattern, instead of being given separate listings. The vocative case is very easily distinguished from the nominative case, though, because a noun in the vocative is always set off from the rest of the sentence with commas and is often preceded by in the interjection "O" -- the Latin equivalent of our "hey": "O puellae, date poetae rosas" (Hey girls, give roses to the poet.) So let's put all this together into a chart you can use when you're translating a Latin sentence. The sooner you've memorized this guidelines, the easier it'll be for you to work through Latin sentences: THE CASES Nominative the subject of a verb Genitive use "of" or "-'s" ("-s'") for the plural Dative use "to" or "for", or put the noun before the direct object Accusative the direct object of a verb or object of a preposition Ablative use the prepositions "with" or "for" Vocative use the English "hey" or "Oh" AGREEMENT OF ADJECTIVES AND NOUNS An adjective is a word which modifies or qualifies a noun. "A red leaf:" "leaf" is the noun and "red" is telling you something more about it. That's pretty simple. To indicate which noun an adjective is modify we use position in English: i.e., we put the adjective right next to the noun. "A red leaf with a brown stem fell off the tall tree onto the flat ground". There is no question about which adjectives are modifying which nouns. No one, except perhaps a deconstructionist, would think the author is trying to say that the ground is red or that the stem is flat. Position makes this clear. In Latin, however, where position is not so important, adjectives have to be put together with their nouns differently. Instead of using position, Latin adjectives take on some of the characteristics of the nouns they're modifying: i.e., they undergo changes to match the noun they're modifying. So what properties do nouns have in a Latin sentence. Well, they have case -- they have to have case to work in the sentence -- and they have number (singular or plural) and they have gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter). Remember this about gender: a noun can change its number and case, but it can only have one gender; it cannot change its gender. So each noun has number, gender, and case. An adjective has to be able to acquire the number, gender, and case of the noun it's modifying. So how does it do that? It does it by declining. And in this respect it resembles a noun: nouns decline to get different numbers and cases; so do adjectives. But there is an important difference. Latin nouns are either masculine, feminine or neuter, and they can never change their gender. The noun "porta, -ae (f)" is forever feminine. The noun "poeta, -ae (m)" is forever masculine, etc. But for adjectives to be useful, they have to be able to become any one of the three genders; i.e., adjectives have to be able to be masculine, feminine or neuter to match the gender of the noun they're modifying. And how do they do that? They accomplish this by using endings from different declensions (and you'll learn these other declension in the next couple of chapters). So here are two critical differences between adjectives and nouns: (1) each adjective can have any of the three genders, but each noun can have only one gender; (2) each noun will belong only to one declension, but adjectives can span declensions. You'll see much more of this later, but for now you need to know that adjectives use endings of the first declension to become feminine, and, therefore, to modify nouns which are feminine in gender. So try this. Decline the expression "big rose": magna rosa N/V. _______________ _______________ GEN. _______________ _______________ DAT. _______________ _______________ ACC. _______________ _______________ ABL. _______________ _______________ N/V. _______________ _______________ GEN. _______________ _______________ DAT. _______________ _______________ ACC. _______________ _______________ ABL. _______________ _______________ Now look at these endings for the adjective and the noun. They look alike, don't they. But this is dangerously deceptive. Get this in your head: agreement means same number, gender, and case, not look-alike endings, even though in this limited example and in all the examples in this chapter they do look alike. Consider this problem. The noun for poet is a masculine noun in the first declension: "poeta, -ae (m)". Now, for an adjective to agree with it, it must have the same number, gender and case. Right? But adjectives with first declension endings are masculine. So, will the endings of an adjective modifying the noun "poeta" be the same as those as "poeta". I.e., will the pattern for "great poet" look like this? SINGULAR magna poeta N/V. magna poeta GEN. magnae poetae DAT. magnae poetae ACC. magnam poetam ABL. magna poeta PLURAL N/V. magnae poetae GEN. magnarum poetarum DAT. magnis poetis ACC. magnas poetas ABL. magnis poetis The answer is "no", because the forms "magna, magnae" etc. are feminine in gender because adjectives use first declension endings to become feminine in gender but the noun "poeta" is masculine. Therefore the adjective will have to use endings from another declension and the forms will not look alike. You'll see all this in the next two chapters. But remember: agreement means having the same number, gender, and case, not having the same endings. Okay? VOCABULARY PUZZLES tua, mea The words "tua", which means "your" and "mea", which means "my" are the first and second person singular possessive adjectives, and they consequently must "agree" in number, gender and case with whatever is being possessed. "tu-" and "me-" are the stems of the word, and the "-a" is the adjectival suffix. What causes students concern is that they can't quite bring themselves to make the adjectival suffix of the singular possessive adjectives plural. For example, they balk at "meae rosae" (my roses), because they assume somehow that the entire word "me-" must become plural. This isn't necessary. Think of it this way: the "me-" or "tu-" part of these words refer you to the person doing the possessing, the adjectival suffix refers to whatever is being possessed. CHAPTER 3 "Second Declension; Masculine Nouns and Adjectives; Word Order" THE SECOND DECLENSION A declension is a pattern of endings for the different cases and numbers which a noun falls through. Latin has five declension, though the great majority of nouns fall into the first three. In this chapter, you'll learn one part of the second declension. (You'll get the other part of the second declension in Chapter 4.) Let's look again at a paradigm for the first declension endings and compare them to endings of the second declension. Decline the noun "puella, -ae (f)". puella, -ae (f) amicus, -i (m) Nom. _______________ amicus Gen. _______________ amici Dat. _______________ amico Acc. _______________ amicum Abl. _______________ amico Voc. _______________ amice N/V. _______________ amici Gen. _______________ amicorum Dat. _______________ amicis Acc. _______________ amicos Abl. _______________ amicis As you can plainly see, "-a-" is the dominant vowel of the first declension. With the exception of the dative and ablative plural, all the case endings have an "-a-" in them. Now let's compare the first declension with the second. Although it's a little more difficult to see in places, the dominant vowel of the second declension is "-o-". Once you see this difference between the first and second declension, you can detect some of the similarities. (1) the accusative singular of both declensions adds "-m" to the thematic vowel: "-am" and "-um" (originally "-om"). (2) the ablative singular is just the long thematic vowel: "-a-" and "-o-". (3) the genitive plural is the ending "-rum" added to the thematic vowel: "-arum" and "-orum". (5) the dative and ablative plural are formed alike: First Declension: "a-" + "-is" = "-ais" = "-is" Second Declension: "o-" + "-is" = "-ois" = "-is" (6) the accusative plural in both declensions is the thematic vowel + "-s:" "-as" and "-os". So let's set out the cases endings for the second declension: SINGULAR PLURAL Nom. ____________________ ____________________ Gen. ____________________ ____________________ Dat. ____________________ ____________________ Acc. ____________________ ____________________ Abl. ____________________ ____________________ Voc. ____________________ ____________________ 2ND DECLENSION NOUNS IN -ER AND -IR; STEM CHANGES As I said, this is the basic pattern of endings for nouns of the second declension, and all second declension nouns will basically use these endings. There are second declension nouns, however, which do not follow this pattern precisely, but which use slight variations of it. To begin with, not all second declension nouns end in "-us" in the nominative singular. Some end in "-er" and one common noun ends in "-ir". So go back to the blank for the nominative singular and add the variant nominative endings "-er" and "-ir". Let's have a look at a second declension noun that ends in "-er" in the nominative singular: "puer, -i (m)" (boy). Just to review, how do you know that this noun belongs to the second declension? The answer is the genitive singular ending listed as the second entry. It's "-i", the genitive singular ending of the second declension. So what will the form of "puer" be in the genitive singular? That's easy too. It'll be "pueri", (stem + "-i). Now let's decline "puer" through all its cases in both numbers. SINGULAR PLURAL Nom. ____________________ ____________________ Gen. ____________________ ____________________ Dat. ____________________ ____________________ Acc. ____________________ ____________________ Abl. ____________________ ____________________ Voc. ____________________ ____________________ Let's try another second declension noun which ends in "-er" in the nominative singular: "ager, agri (m)" (field). The nominative is the "-er" type you saw in "puer", but look at the genitive singular. Instead of just giving you an abbreviation for the genitive singular ending -- "-i" -- the dictionary is telling you something more. Here you have a full form, "agri", for the genitive entry of the noun. The case ending obviously is "-i", so the noun belongs to second declension. If you take off the genitive singular ending "-i" you're left with "agr-", and what's that? We need to pause here and refine what we mean by a "stem" of a noun. As you probably recall, the stem of a noun is the basic form of the noun to which you then add the case endings. But despite the attractive notion that the "stem" of a noun is the nominative singular minus the case ending, a stem of a noun is really the form which is the root of all cases except the nominative singular. This is not to say that the nominative singular will never be the true stem of the word. In some declensions it is. But not always. Look at "ager" again. The stem of the word is found not by looking at the nominative entry, but by dropping the genitive singular ending from "agri", leaving "agr-". So the true stem of this word is "agr-", not "ager-". Hence we say that "ager" is a stem changing noun, or that it has a stem change. This is because the stem is not apparent in the nominative entry. Let's decline "ager, agri (m)". Remember, the stem is "agr-": SINGULAR PLURAL N/V. ____________________ ____________________ Gen. ____________________ ____________________ Dat. ____________________ ____________________ Acc. ____________________ ____________________ Abl. ____________________ ____________________ Can you see now why it's important that a dictionary begin to decline the noun for you by giving you the genitive singular? If you weren't given "agri", after "ager", you wouldn't know the declension of the noun, nor would you know that "ager-" is not the true stem. If a noun is not a stem-changing noun, then the dictionary will simply put the genitive ending in the second entry. But if it's a stem changing noun, the dictionary must indicate that. Examine the following nouns and see how the dictionary conveys the necessary information. ENTRY STEM MEANING gener, -i (m) gener- son-in-law magister, -tri (m) magistr- teacher socer, -i (m) socer- father-in-law liber, -bri (m) libr- book vesper, -i (m) vesper- evening signifer, -i (m) signifer- standard bearer The noun "vir, -i (m)" represents another class of second declension nominative singular endings. Is there a stem change indicated in the genitive singular? No, there isn't, so it behaves just like "puer". Decline it. SINGULAR PLURAL N/V. ____________________ ____________________ Gen. ____________________ ____________________ Dat. ____________________ ____________________ Acc. ____________________ ____________________ Abl. ____________________ ____________________ NOUNS ENDING IN -IUS Nouns whose stem ends in an "-i-" need a closer look. "Filius, -ii (m)" is a second declension noun and the stem is "fili-" ("filius" minus the "-i" of the genitive singular). But the second entry has an extra "-i". What's that all about? Don't be disturbed. Often when a stem ends in an "-i-" the dictionary likes to reassure you that despite its odd appearance, the genitive singular form really ends with two "i's": "filii". Similarly, the dative and ablative plurals: "filiis". It may look odd, but there was a noticeable difference in the way the two "i's" would have been pronounced. The first is short, the second is long, so "filii", would have be pronounced "FEE leh ee". But in fact even the Romans weren't very comfortable with this arrangement, and often the "i's" were simplified to one long "-i-" to "fili" or "filis". To be consistent, Wheelock always uses the double "i". In the vocative singular, however, the "i" at the end of the stem does cause a change. "Filius" is an "-us" ending second declension noun so the vocative singular should be "filie". But short "i" and short "e" are so similar in sound that some simplification was inevitable. The final form is not "filie" but "fili". So also in the name "Virgilius": not "Virgilie", but "Virgili". Decline "filius, -ii (m)". SINGULAR PLURAL Nom. ____________________ ____________________ Gen. ____________________ ____________________ Dat. ____________________ ____________________ Acc. ____________________ ____________________ Abl. ____________________ ____________________ Voc. ____________________ ADJECTIVES Let's review for a moment. You remember that adjectives are words which qualify nouns, and that an adjective will "agree" with the noun it modifies. By "agreeing" we mean that it will have the same number, gender, and case as the noun it's modifying. You also know that an adjective must be able to modify nouns of all three genders, and that to modify a feminine noun an adjective uses the case endings from the first declension. For example, translate and decline "great wisdom". "Wisdom" in Latin is "sapientia, -ae (f)", a feminine noun of the first declension, as you can tell from the entry. "Great" is the adjective modifying "wisdom" so it must agree in number, gender and case with "sapientia". The stem of the adjective is "magn-", and the case endings you must use are those of the first declension, since "sapientia" is feminine. SINGULAR great wisdom N/V. _______________ _______________ Gen. _______________ _______________ Dat. _______________ _______________ Acc. _______________ _______________ Abl. _______________ _______________ PLURAL N/V. _______________ _______________ Gen. _______________ _______________ Dat. _______________ _______________ Acc. _______________ _______________ Abl. _______________ _______________ What happens when an adjective needs to modify a masculine noun? To modify a masculine noun an adjective uses the case endings from the second declension. That's fine and good, but we have a problem. Which of the three singular nominative forms of the second declension do they use: "-us", "-er", or "-ir?" The answer is that some adjectives will us "-us" and some will use "-er". (None use "-ir".) All the adjectives we'll be looking at for the next two chapters use the "-us" ending and decline after that pattern. In chapter five you'll get the "-er" type, so I'll postpone discussion of that kind until then (although there's nothing really very complicated about it). Let's suppose you want to modify the noun "poeta, -ae (m) with adjective for "great?" Look up "great" in the dictionary and write down what you see. (Make sure you look it up! I'll wait right here.) great ______________________________ Now what kind of an entry is this? The convention for listing an adjective is different from that for a noun. The first entry tells you how an adjective modifies a masculine noun, the second tells you how it modifies a feminine noun, and the third how it modifies a neuter noun (and we'll learn about that in the next chapter). So let's look at the first entry: "magnus" tells you that the adjective uses the "-us" type endings from the second declension to modify a masculine noun; the "-a", which stands for the nominative singular of the first declension, tells you that it uses first declension endings to modify feminine nouns; the "-um" tells you which endings to use for neuter nouns. Now, how did you find the stem of "-us" type nouns of the second declension? Do you remember? You simply drop off the "-us" ending, and that's the stem. What's the stem of the adjective "magnus, -a, -um?" I hope you guessed "magn-". So an entry like this is a short-hand way of saying this: MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER -us -a -um -i -ae -o -ae -um -am -o -a -e -a magn- + -i -ae -orum -arum -is -is -os -as -is -is So decline "great poet". (WARNING: Remember that agreement means same number, gender, and case; not form which look alike!) SINGULAR PLURAL great poet great poets Nom. ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ Gen. ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ Dat. ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ Acc. ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ Abl. ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ Voc. ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ APPOSITION Consider this English sentence: "Daniel, my brother, you were older than me [sic]". You can easily see that "brother" is giving you more information about "Daniel"; that is, "brother" is modifying or qualifying "Daniel". In this sense, at least, "brother" is acting like an adjective. But since "brother" is a noun, not an adjective, it cannot qualify another noun in quite the same way an adjective does. We call this modifying relationship between nouns "apposition". We would say "brother" is in "apposition" to "Daniel". In Latin also, nouns can be set in apposition to each other for modification. So one noun is modifying another noun -- something like an adjective modifying a noun. But, obviously a noun cannot agree with the noun it's modifying the same way an adjective does. And why not? Nouns all have gender inherent in them, so a noun can never change its gender to a agree in gender with a noun it's modifying. But it can agree with the noun it's modifying in case, and it will. In Latin, when a noun is in apposition to another noun, the noun doing the modifying will agree with the modified noun in case. "Gaium, meum filium, in agris video". (I see Gaius, my son, in the fields.) "Gaium" is accusative because it's the direct object of the verb "video". Therefore the word for "son" must also be in the accusative case, since it's telling us more about Gaius, and Gaius, as the object of the verb "to see", is in the accusative case. VOCABULARY PUZZLES de + abl.; in + abl. Like English, prepositions in Latin will take the noun they're governing in a case other than the nominative. We wouldn't say in English "with I" or "to she:" we say "with me" and "to her". But in Latin, some prepositions will have to be followed by the accusative case; others by the ablative case. (And some can be followed by both, though the meaning changes slightly.) Therefore, whenever you learn a preposition, you must also memorize the case it takes. pauci, -ae This is an adjective, but unlike others adjectives, the word for "few" has no singular forms. (That's logical.) So the dictionary starts its listing in the nominative plural. As you can see, the "-i" and the "-ae" endings are the second and first declension nominative plural endings. So this adjective declines like "magnus, -a, -um" with the exception that it has no singular forms. meus, -a, [-um] The adjective means "my", and it agrees with whatever is being owned. The stem is "me-". It has an irregular vocative singular ending. Instead of "mee", you have "mi". So it's "mi amice" for "Hey, my friend". Romanus, -a, [-um] This is an adjective, but it can be used as a noun. Like "American". It's an adjective -- like "American Pie" -- but it can also be used for a person: "she's an American", or "The Americans are coming". Hence, "Romani" can mean "the Romans", and "Romana" can mean a "Roman woman". On the other hand, we can also say "Romana patria": "the Roman fatherland"; or "Romani libri": "Roman books". CHAPTER 4 "Neuters of the Second Declension; Summary of Adjectives; Present Indicative of Sum; Predicate Nouns and Adjectives" Despite its lengthy title, you'll find that much of this chapter only adds incrementally to concepts you've already learned. That's the way it's going to be for most of these chapters. Now that you've learned the basics, the details will be much easier for you to grasp. NEUTERS OF THE SECOND DECLENSION The second declension is the pattern of cases ending which has an "-o-" for its thematic vowel. The nominative singular has three possible forms -- "-us", "-er", and "-ir". Sometimes nouns which end in "-er" in the nominative undergo a stem change from the nominative to the genitive singular. To find the real stem of the noun, you simply drop off the genitive ending "-i" from the second entry in the dictionary. Finally, you may remember that the vast majority of nouns ending in "-us", "-er", and "-ir" in the nominative singular are masculine. What you learned in the last chapter was not the whole story on the second declension. The second declension is divided into two parts: the part you know, and a set of endings which you're going to learn now. This second part contains only neuter nouns. This is important to remember. Unlike the first declension and the first part of the second, whose nouns could be either feminine or masculine, all nouns which follow this second part of the second declension are neuter. Next, the endings of this pattern are nearly identical to those of the second declension you already know. The differences are that (1) the nominative singular ending is always "-um"; (2) the stem is found by dropping off nominative "-um" ending and there is never a stem change; (3) the neuter nominative and accusative plural endings are "-a". You don't have to worry about the vocative singular; it's the same as the nominative singular. Remember, the only place in Latin where the vocative differs from the nominative is in the singular of "-us" ending second declension nouns and adjectives. A dictionary entry for a noun of this type will look like this: "x"um, -i (n) (where "x" is the stem). Since there is never a stem change, the second entry only gives you the genitive singular ending so that you can see the declension of the noun. The "-um" of the nominative singular and then the "-i" in the genitive tell you that the noun is a neuter noun of the second declension, and that it therefore fits into the subcategory of the second declension. Here are some examples for you to decline and a second declension noun of the "us" type for comparison: numerus, -i (m) periculum, -i (n) consilium, -ii (n) Nom. ______________ _______________ _______________ Gen. ______________ _______________ _______________ Dat. ______________ _______________ _______________ Acc. ______________ _______________ _______________ Abl. ______________ _______________ _______________ Voc. ______________ N/V. ______________ _______________ _______________ Gen. ______________ _______________ _______________ Dat. ______________ _______________ _______________ Acc. ______________ _______________ _______________ Abl. ______________ _______________ _______________ There are a couple of hard and fast rules pertaining to the inflection of all neuter nouns, no matter which declension they belong to, which you may want to commit to memory: (1) the nominative and accusative forms of neuters nouns are always like each other, and (2) the nominative plural -- and hence neuter plural because of rule (1) -- is always a short "-a". ADJECTIVES You recall that adjectives are words which modify nouns, and that in Latin an adjective must agree with the noun it's modifying. By "agreeing", we mean it must have the same number, gender, and case. An adjective acquires number and case by declining through a declension -- just like nouns -- but how does an adjective change gender? An adjective changes gender by using different declensional patterns. If an adjective needs to modify a feminine noun, it uses endings from the first declension; if it has to modify a masculine noun, it uses the second declension endings which are used by "-us" and "-er" ending nouns. So how do you imagine will an adjective modify a neuter noun? Let's look at a dictionary entry for a typical adjective: "magnus, -a, -um". The first entry, as you recall, tells you which declension the adjective uses to modify a masculine noun. It tells you by giving you the nominative singular ending of the declension it uses. The second entry is the nominative singular ending of the declension the adjective uses to modify a feminine noun. The third entry is the nominative singular of the declension the adjective uses to modify a neuter noun. So how does the adjective "magnus, -a, -um" modify a neuter noun? It uses the "-um" neuter endings of the second declension, so "magnus", when it's modifying a neuter noun, will follow the same pattern as a noun like "periculum, -i (n). Write out all the possible forms of the adjective "great". (Check your work against Wheelock, p. 18.) "magnus, -a, -um" MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER Nom. _______________ _______________ _______________ Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________ Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________ Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________ Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________ Voc. _______________ N/V. _______________ _______________ _______________ Gen. _______________ _______________ _______________ Dat. _______________ _______________ _______________ Acc. _______________ _______________ _______________ Abl. _______________ _______________ _______________ THE VERB "TO BE" As in most languages, the verb "to be" in Latin is irregular -- i.e., it doesn't follow the normal pattern of conjugation of other verbs. Wheelock says it's best just to memorize the forms by sheer effort and rote. That's a perfectly acceptable suggestion. But the verb is actually much more regular than it may first appear. If you wish, you may try to follow my discussion about the verb to get a glimpse behind its seemingly bizarre appearance. If not, just memorize the forms outright and skip over the paragraphs in between the lines of asterisks. **************************************** For those of you going on with me, let's recall a couple of things. A verb conjugates by adding personal endings to the stem of the verb. You find the stem of the verb by dropping of the "-re" ending of the infinitive, and what you're left with is the stem. The final vowel of the stem tells you the conjugation of the verb: "-a-" for a first conjugation, "-e-" for the second conjugation, etc. So let's have a look at the infinitive of the verb "to be" to find its stem. The infinitive is "esse". What kind of an infinitive is this? We need to back up a little. Although you were told otherwise, the real infinitive ending of a Latin verb is not "-re" at all, but "-se". Why does the "-se" become "-re"? It's an invariable rule of Latin pronunciation that an "-s-" which is caught between two vowels -- we call it "intervocalic" -- turns into a "-r-". So the reason "laudare" is not "laudase" is that the original intervocalic "-s-" became an "-r-". So let's look again at the infinitive for the verb "to be": "esse". If we drop off the infinitive ending "-se", we're left with the stem "es-" for the verb. But the stem has no final vowel. For this reason we call "esse" an "athematic verb", because its stem ends in a consonant, not a vowel, as other verbs do. To conjugate the verb, we should therefore add the personal endings directly to the final "-s" of the stem. This is what the formula should be (don't fill in the conjugated form yet). STEM + PERSONAL ENDING = CONJUGATED FORM 1st es + m = _______________ 2nd es + s = _______________ 3rd es + t = _______________ 1st es + mus = _______________ 2nd es + tis = _______________ 3rd es + nt = _______________ Try to pronounce the final form for the first person singular "esm". Do you hear how you're automatically inserting a "u" sound to make the word pronounceable? It sounds like "esum". Try to pronounce "esmus". The same thing happens between the "s" and the "m". You almost have to insert a "u". Now pronounce "esnt". Same thing, right? This is what happened to these forms. Over time, a "u" sound became a part of the conjugation of the verb, and the initial "e-" of the stem of all the forms with this "u" was lost. (I can't account for that.) Write out the resulting forms. Now look at the remaining forms. Is there any trouble adding an "s" or a "t" to the final "s-" of the stem? No. In fact, in the second person singular, the "s" of the personal ending just gets swallowed up by the "s" of the stem: "es + s = es". Where there was no complication in pronouncing the forms, the "e-" of the stem stayed. Now write out the remaining forms of "to be" in Latin. **************************************** As with other Latin verbs, the basic form of "to be" is considered to be the first person singular, and that's how the verb will be listed in the dictionary, followed by the infinitive: "sum, esse". So when I want to refer to the Latin verb "to be", I'll say the verb "sum". You can also see why it's going to be important to memorize all these forms well. You can't look up "estis" or "es". You must reduce these conjugated forms to a form that will appear in the dictionary: you must know that these forms are from "sum". THE SENTENCE: SUBJECT AND PREDICATE We divide sentences into two parts: the subject, which is what's being talked about, and the predicate, what's being said about the subject. Basically, the subject is the subject of the verb, and the predicate is the verb and everything after it. For example, in the sentence "Latin drives me crazy because it has so many forms", "Latin" is the subject, and everything else is the predicate. Of course, the full story of subject and predicate is more involved than this, but this will get us by for now. PREDICATE NOMINATIVES, TRANSITIVE AND INTRANSITIVE VERBS In Latin the subject of a verb is in the nominative case. You know that. So it may seem to follow that, if the subject of the verb is the subject of the sentence, that the nominative case should be entirely limited to the subject of the sentence. That is, we shouldn't expect there ever to be a noun in the nominative case in the predicate. Nouns in the nominative case should be the subject of verbs, and the subject of verbs is in the subject clause of the sentence, not in the predicate. But we do find nouns in the nominative in the predicate. When we do, we call them, logically enough, "predicate nominatives". How does it happen that a nominative case shows up in the predicate, after the verb? We divided verbs into two broad classes: verbs which transfer action and energy from the subject to something else (the object), and verbs in which there is no movement of energy from one place to another. Consider this sentence: "George kicked the ball". Here George expended energy -- he kicked -- and this energy was immediately applied to an object -- the ball -- which was changed as a result of what George did to it. We call a verb like this a "transitive" verb and the object affected by it the direct object. In Latin, the direct object of a transitive verb is put into the accusative case. Now look at this sentence: "The river is wide". Is the river doing anything in this sentence to anything else? Does the verb "is" imply that the subject is acting on something else? No. There is no movement of activity from the subject to something else. Verbs like this are called "intransitive" and don't take direct objects. In Latin that means they are not followed by an accusative case. Some more examples of this: "The dog was running away", "We'll all laugh", "The clown didn't seem very happy". Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a verb in English is transitive or intransitive. A rule of thumb is this. Ask yourself, "Can I 'x' something?" (where "x" is the verb you're investigating). If the answer is "yes" then the verb is transitive; if "no" then it's intransitive. "Can I see something?" Yes; therefore the verb "to see" is transitive. "Can I fall something?" No; therefore "to fall" is intransitive. THE COPULATIVE VERB "SUM" The verb "to be" is obviously an intransitive verb -- there is no movement of energy from the subject to an object -- but it has an interesting additional property. What are we actually doing when we use the verb "to be?" We are in effect modifying the subject with something in the predicate. In the sentence "The river is wide", "river" is the subject and "wide" is an adjective in the predicate that is modifying "river". Even though it's on the other side of the verb and in the predicate, it's directly tied to the subject. In Latin, therefore, what case would "wide" be in? Think of it this way. "Wide" is an adjective, and it's modifying the "river", even though it's in the predicate. Adjectives in Latin must agree in number, gender and case with the nouns they modify, so "wide" has to be in the nominative case. It's modifying "river", right? What the verb "to be" does is to tie or link the subject directly to something in the predicate, and for that reason we call the verb "to be" a "linking" or "copulative" verb. This principle has a special application in Latin, which has a full case system. When the verb "sum" links the subject with an adjective in the predicate, the adjective agrees with the subject. Donum est magnum. Dona sunt magna. nominative = nominative nominative=nominative neuter = neuter neuter = neuter singular = singular plural = plural When "sum" links the subject with a noun in the predicate, however, we have a bit of a problem. Nouns have fixed gender, so the noun in the predicate can't agree with the subject noun in quite the same way an adjective can. A noun in the predicate has its own gender which it cannot change. But a noun in the predicate which is tied to the subject by "sum", will agree with the subject in case. Think of the verb "sum" as an equal sign, with the same case on both sides. Mea vita est bellum (war). nominative =nominative feminine ~ neuter singular = singular VOCABULARY PUZZLES Look at these two dictionary listings: 1. bellum, -i (n) "war" 2. bellus, -a, -um "beautiful" The first is an entry for a noun, the second an entry for an adjective. What are the differences? An entry for a noun starts with the nominative singular form, then it gives you the genitive singular. It actually starts to decline the noun for you so that you can tell the noun's declension and whether the noun has any stem changes you should be worried about. The final entry is the gender, since nouns have fixed gender which you must be given. For a noun, therefore you must be given (1) the nominative form, (2) the stem, (3) the declension, and (4) the gender. An entry for an adjective, by contrast, has different information to convey. For an adjective, you must know which declension it'll use to modify nouns of different gender, and that's what the "-us, -a, -um" is telling you. But there is an important omission from the adjective listing. There is no gender specified, and how could there be, adjectives change their gender. As you'll see later, this is the one sure sign that a word you're looking at is an adjective: if it has declension endings listed but no gender. You may also be concerned that, given the similar appearance of these two words, you may mix them up in your sentences. Certainly there will be some overlap of the two forms. For example, "bella" is a possible form of the noun "bellum" and the adjective "bellus, -a, -um". But there are also many forms which "bellus, -a, -um" can have which "bellum, -i (n)" can never have. For example, "bellarum" can't possibly come from a second declension neuter noun. Neither can "bellae", "bellas", "bellos", "bella", and some others. If you see "bell- something" in your text, first ask yourself whether the case ending is a possible form from the neuter noun for war. If not, then it's from the adjective for "pretty". In the instances where the forms do overlap, you'll have to let context and your good judgment tell you which it is. CHAPTER 5 "First and Second Conjugations: Future Indicative Active; Adjectives of the First and Second Declension in -er" FUTURE TENSE OF FIRST AND SECOND CONJUGATION VERBS When you want to put an English verb into the future tense, you use the stem of the verb and put "will" in front of it: "I see" becomes "I will see"; "They have" becomes "They will have"; etc. We call the additional word "will" a "helping verb", or, more learnedly, an "auxiliary verb". No matter what you call it, the "will" is modifying the way the listener will understand the action of the verb "to see" and "to have". In Latin, the future tense is formed differently, but it still involves the addition of something to the stem of the verb. The formula for forming the future tense of first and second conjugation verbs in Latin is this: "stem + be + personal endings". The stem of the verb, you remember, is what's left after you've dropped off the "-re" of the infinitive (the stem includes the stem vowel). The "-be-" is the sign of the future and is attached directly to the stem. Then you add the normal personal endings you used in the present tense directly to the tense sign "be". So let's start to conjugate the future tense of a first and second conjugation verb. Here are the tables. (Don't fill in the conjugated form just yet.) I. FUTURE OF THE FIRST CONJUGATION: laudo, laudare STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED FORM _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ II. FUTURE OF THE SECOND CONJUGATION: moneo, monere STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED FORM _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ _________ + __________ + _____________ = _______________ All this seems quite logical and straight-forward. But these is one glitch: the short "-e-" of the tense sign "-be-" undergoes some radical changes when you start attaching the personal endings. (1) Before the "-o" of the first person singular, the short "-e-" disappears completely, leaving "-bo". (2) Before the "-nt" of the third person plural, it becomes a "-u-", leaving the form "-bunt". (3) And before all the other endings, it becomes an "-i-", for "-bis", "-bit", "-bimus", and "-bitis". As you can see, the short "-e-" in fact never stays what it is in any of these forms. And you may very well be wondering to yourself why I'm showing you all this. Why can't you simply memorize the future endings as "-bo", "-bis", "-bit", "-bimus", "-bitis", and "-bunt", without having to look any farther back into its history. The answer is you can certainly remember just the final forms if you wish, but this problem of the short "-e-" changing to other vowels occurs repeatedly in Latin, and instead of memorizing by rote each time you come across it, it just seems easier to learn the rule governing the changes, rather than encountering the changes each time as unique phenomena. It's hard to believe now, but knowing the deeper rules will make your lives simpler in the future. Now that you know the rules, go back and fill in the conjugated forms of the future tense. FIRST AND SECOND DECLENSION ADJECTIVES IN -ER Look at this adjective: "stultus, -a, -um". Do you remember what this entry is telling you? An adjective spans the first and second declensions to get the endings it needs to modify nouns of different genders. This entry is telling you that the adjective for "stupid" (stem: "stult-") uses second declension "-us" type endings when it modifies masculine nouns, first declension endings when it modifies feminine nouns, and the "-um" category of neuter endings of the second declension to modify neuter nouns. Now let's look a little more closely at the second declension. It has two parts, you may remember: the section reserved entirely for neuter nouns -- those ending in "-um" in the nominative singular -- and the section used by masculine and feminine nouns (the vast majority are masculine). There is a variety of nominative singular endings in this second group: "-us", "-er", and "-ir". The nouns which followed the "-us" type second declension presented two problems: to find the stem, you simply dropped off the "-us" ending of the nominative case. But for the second declension nouns which ended in "-er" in the nominative singular, you had to be more careful. For some of them, the stem was the form of the nominative singular, but for others the "-e-" of the "-er" dropped out from the stem. Then you used the reduced form for all the other cases. The dictionary has to tell you which "-er" ending nouns had stem changes, and it does so in the in second entry for the noun. puer, -i (m) liber, -bri (m) ager, agri (m) The stem of "puer" is "puer-", the stem of "liber" is "libr-", the stem of "ager" is "agr-". Okay, so much by way of review. Now look at this word as it appears in the dictionary: "liber, -a, -um". What is this? Is it a noun or an adjective? You can tell it's an adjective because there is no gender listed for it. (Remember, an adjective has to be able to change its gender, so it has no fixed gender, as a noun does.) An entry for an adjective has to tell you how it will acquire different genders -- which declensional pattern it will use to become masculine, feminine and neuter -- and, you may recall, the first entry shows you the masculine nominative, the second the feminine nominative, and the third the neuter nominative. So have a look again at this adjective. The second entry looks familiar -- it's the nominative singular ending of the first declension. This tells you that the adjective "liber" become feminine by using first declension endings. The "-um" should look familiar, too. That's its neuter ending, telling you it uses the "-um" endings of the second declension to modify neuter nouns. But what's the first entry? You know that this is telling you how the adjective becomes masculine, but what about the "-er". You've probably already figured out by now that the adjective is going to use the second declension endings to modify masculine nouns, and that it's going to use the "-er" ending in the nominative singular. So for "free soul", you would write "liber animus". But what is the stem of the adjective? Remember that "-er" ending nouns of the second declension often change their stems when they move out of the nominative singular. The dictionary tells you about that in the second entry for the adjective in the genitive singular. That is, the dictionary actually starts declining it for you. But how will it tell you whether an adjective in "-er" has a stem change? The rule is this. An adjective in "-er" which changes its stem (i.e., drops the "-e") will use the changed stem in all genders and numbers and cases except for the nominative masculine singular. So all you need to see to know whether the adjective is going to change its stem is the next entry -- the feminine nominative singular -- to know about the stem. Look at this entry. M F N pulcher, -chra, -chrum There, do you see it? The second entry shows you not only how the adjective becomes feminine, but also that the stem for all other cases except the masculine nominative singular is "pulchr-". Look as this adjective: "noster, nostra, nostrum". Stem change, right? Now look at this again: "liber, -a, -um". There is no stem change since it is not indicated in the second entry. So the stem is "liber-" throughout its inflection. Let's do a few exercises. Translate and decline the following. beautiful fatherland our son Nom. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Gen. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Dat. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Acc. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Abl. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Voc. ______________ ______________ N/V. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Gen. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Dat. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Acc. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Abl. ______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ VOCABULARY PUZZLES animus, -i (m) In the singular the word means "soul, spirit", the vapory seat of self-awareness. But in the plural it often takes on another meaning. It may mean "courage", like our expression "high spirits", "spirited", as in "The losing team put up a spirited struggle". It happens often in Latin that a word will acquire new meanings in the plural. C.p., the meaning of the English word "manner" in the singular with its meaning in the plural: "manners". noster, -tra, -trum This is an adjective which means "our". That is, the adjective agrees with the thing that is "ours". Therefore, it has a plural form only if the noun it's agreeing with is plural. Students are often lured into thinking that "noster" will have only plural case endings because "our" is first person plural. Remember, "noster" will have plural cases endings only if it's agreeing with a plural noun: "noster filius" (our son) or "nostri filii" (our sons). igitur Wheelock tells you it's post-positive: it never is the first word in a Latin sentence (and it's usually the second word.) Despite our tendency to put the English "therefore" at the beginning of the sentence, "igitur" is never first. Remember. -ne We form questions in English by juggling word order around, and by using auxiliary verbs. But Latin doesn't have that option since word order doesn't work in the same way. To ask a question in Latin, put "-ne" at the end of the first word of the sentence. The word to which it is attached becomes the point of inquiry of the question: "Amasne me?" (Do you love me?), "Mene amas?" (Is it me you love (and not someone else)?) propter + acc. As you know, prepositions in Latin take certain cases. "Propter" takes the accusative case -- always -- and we translate it, "because of". Don't be thrown off by our English translation. "Propter" does not take the genitive case in Latin. It takes the accusative. satis When we say "I have enough money", we use "enough" as an adjective modifying "money". In Latin the word for "enough" is a noun, not an adjective. Latin follows "satis" with the genitive case, and says in effect "I have enough of money" (Habeo satis pecuniae.) You'll be pleased to know that "satis" does not decline -- it is always "satis". CHAPTER 6 "Sum: Future and Imperfect Indicative; Possum: Present, Future, and Imperfect Indicative; Complementary Infinitive" The two verbs which are the subject of this chapter are closely related -- "possum" ("to be able") uses the forms of the verb "sum" ("to be") -- so you don't have to learn two separate irregular verbs outright. You can tie them together. SUM, ESSE: FUTURE TENSE You have already learned the present tense of the irregular verb "sum". And those of you who followed my expanded notes on these forms know the whole truth about the present tense. Those of you who skipped them, I recommend you go back to that section and read them now. They will help you with this discussion. Do you remember how you formed the future tense of the first and second conjugation verbs? It was something like this: stem + tense sign + personal endings = conjugated forms The verb "sum" follows this formula exactly, but it has a tense sign for the future you haven't seen before. Let's start at the beginning. (1) The stem of the verb "to be" is "es-". (2) The tense sign for the future is short "-e-". For the first and second conjugations, the tense sign of the future was "be-", and the short "-e-" of the tense sign underwent changes when the personal endings were added to it. Do you remember what they were? The short "-e-" future tense sign will undergo the same changes. (3) The personal endings are the same you've been using all along: "-o" or "-m", "-s", "-t" etc. So let's set up a construction table for the future of "sum". For now, fill in all the information except the conjugated form. FUTURE TENSE: "sum, esse" STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED FORMS 1st _____ _________ ___________ _______________ 2nd _____ _________ ___________ _______________ 3rd _____ _________ ___________ _______________ 1st _____ _________ ___________ _______________ 2nd _____ _________ ___________ _______________ 3rd _____ _________ ___________ _______________ There is one more thing you need to know before you can finish this off. It's a rule of Latin pronunciation that whenever an "-s-" is between two vowels (when it's "intervocalic", as the professionals say), it changes from "-s-" to "-r-". Now look at the stem of "sum". "Es-" plus the tense sign "-e-" will put the "-s-" between two vowels, so the "-s-" of the stem will become an "-r-": "ese-" = "ere-". That, then, will be the base to which you add the personal endings. Now fill out the conjugated forms -- and remember the changes the short "-e-" is going to go through. (Check Wheelock, p. 27.) SUM, ESSE: IMPERFECT TENSE The imperfect tense is a new tense for you, and we're not going to look very deeply into it here. For now, just remember that the imperfect tense of "sum" is our "was" and "were". At least don't call this the past tense; call it the imperfect tense. The imperfect tense is formed along the same lines as the future tense: stem + tense sign + personal endings = conjugated forms Obviously, since this is a different tense, the tense sign is not going to be the same as the future tense sign. The tense sign of the imperfect is "-a-". One other slight difference is that the imperfect tense uses the alternate first person singular ending: "-m" instead of the expected "-o". And don't forget the rule of "-s-": when it's intervocalic, it changes to "-r-". Fill out the following table: IMPERFECT TENSE: "sum, esse" STEM + TENSE SIGN + PERS. END. = CONJUGATED FORMS 1st ______ _________ _____________ ______________ 2nd ______ _________ _____________ _______________ 3rd ______ _________ _____________ _______________ 1st ______ _________ _____________ _______________ 2nd ______ _________ _____________ _______________ 3rd ______ _________ _____________ _______________ POSSUM, POSSE: PRESENT, FUTURE, IMPERFECT TENSES In Latin, the verb "to be able" is a combination of the adjective base "pot-" ("able") plus the forms of the verb "sum". To say "I am able", Latin took the adjective "pot-" and combined it with the present tense of "sum". To say "I will be able", Latin used "pot-" plus the future of "sum". To say "I was able", Latin used "pot-" plus the imperfect of "sum". For the verb "possum", then, it is the verb "sum" provides the person, number, and the tense. In the present tense, there is one glitch: wherever the verb "sum" starts with an "s-", the "-t-" of "pot-" becomes an "-s-" also. So you see "possum" instead of "potsum" (from "pot + sum"), and so on. (When a consonant turns into the consonant which it is next to, we call this "assimilation". So we would say "t" assimilates to "s".) The one real oddity of the verb is its infinitive. We might expect "potesse" ("pot + esse") according to the rules, but the form "posse" is just one of those unexpected moments in life where things get out of control. You might want to remember it this way: the English word "posse" is a group of citizens who have been granted power to make arrests: that is, they have "ableness". Fill out the following charts for the verb "possum, posse". PRESENT TENSE: possum, posse ADJECTIVE + CONJUGATED FORM OF SUM = CONJUGATED FORM 1st pot ____________________ _______________ 2nd _________ ____________________ _______________ 3rd _________ ____________________ _______________ 1st _________ ____________________ _______________ 2nd _________ ____________________ _______________ 3rd _________ ____________________ _______________ FUTURE TENSE: possum, posse ADJECTIVE + CONJUGATED FORM OF SUM = CONJUGATED FORM 1st _________ ____________________ _______________ 2nd _________ ____________________ _______________ 3rd _________ ____________________ _______________ 1st _________ ____________________ _______________ 2nd _________ ____________________ _______________ 3rd _________ ____________________ _______________ IMPERFECT TENSE: possum, posse ADJECTIVE + CONJUGATED FORM OF SUM = CONJUGATED FORM 1st _________ ____________________ _______________ 2nd _________ ____________________ _______________ 3rd _________ ____________________ _______________ 1st _________ ____________________ _______________ 2nd _________ ____________________ _______________ 3rd _________ ____________________ _______________ The only real difficulty with "possum" is the English translations for it. If you stick with "to be able", "will be able", and "was/were able", you'll get through just fine. But you can also translate "possum" with the English verb "can". But "can", although it is popular in English, is loaded with oddities. For one, it has no future tense -- "I will can??" -- and secondly, the imperfect tense is "could", which is also a conditional of some kind or another in English: "Do you think I could have a dollar?" Try to stay with "to be able" for now, but be aware of the possibilities of "can". THE COMPLEMENTARY INFINITIVE If you were to walk up to a stranger and, out of the blue, say "I am able", you'd be answered by a pause. The stranger would be expecting you to complete your thought: "Yes, you're able to do what?" That's because "to be able" requires another verb to complete its sense, and the form the completing verb will have is the infinitive. It needs a completing infinitive (or "complementary infinitive"). This is true in Latin as well. "Possum" in all its forms will be followed by another verb in the infinitive form: "Poterunt videre nostros filios". (They will be able to see our sons.) VOCABULARY PUZZLES liber, -bri (m) How are you going to keep the noun for "book" distinct in your mind from the adjective for "free": "liber, -a, -um". For one, the "-i-" in "liber, -bri (m)" is short, but it's long in "liber, -a, -um". Next, there is a stem change in "liber, -bri (m)" but not in "liber, -a, -um". So if you see an inflected form "libr- something", then you know the word means "book(s)". Remember this by recalling their English derivatives: library is from the stem-changing "liber, -bri (m)", and "liberty" is from "liber" in which there is no stem change. For the most part, derived words come from the stem of the nouns, not the nominative singular. vitium, -ii (n) Please don't confuse this with the word for life "vita, -ae, (f)". Keep them straight this way: "vicious", which comes from "vitium", has an "-i-" after the "-t", but "vital", which comes from "vita", does not. "Vitia" means "vices" or "crimes"; "vita" means "life". Graecus, -a, -um Like "Romanus, -a, -um", this adjective can be used as a noun: "Graecus" can be translated as "a Greek man", and "Graeca" as "a Greek woman", or as an adjective: "Graecus liber" = "a Greek book". -que As Wheelock tells you, this word (called and enclitic because it "leans on" another word and never stands alone in a sentence) is attached to the end of the second word of two that are to be linked. Think of it this way: "x yque" = "x et y". ubi If "ubi" comes first in a sentence which is a question, always translate it as "Where". "Ubi es?" (Where are you?) But when it is in the middle of a sentence, it can be translated as either "where" or "when", and does not mean that a question is being asked. You must try them both out to see which of the two possibilities makes the most sense. insidiae, -arum (f) We translate this word, although it is always plural in Latin, as the singular "plot", or "treachery". It's going to happen often that ideas which are conceived of as plural in Latin are thought of as singular in English. CHAPTER 7 "Third Declension: Nouns" The third declension is generally considered to be a "pons asinorum" of Latin grammar. But I disagree. The third declension, aside for presenting you a new list of case endings to memorize, really involves no new grammatical principles you've haven't already been working with. I'll take you through it slowly, but mo