LATIN

The Cases

Nominative Indicates the subject of the sentence: who is 'doing' the action of the verb: The girl is singing.

Vocative The form used when addressing a person or thing. If it can be preceded by O, then it is in the vocative case. In the line Rudolph, with your nose so bright, Rudolph is in the vocative case. You could put O in front of the sentence and it would make sense. You will notice that a noun in the vocative case is separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma.

Accusative The object of the sentence, the person (or thing) receiving or 'suffering' the action of the verb: The girl is singing a song. This case is also used after certain prepositions, eg, Going to market.

Genitive Expresses possession: The girl's song.

Dative Indicates the indirect object of the verb (of saying or giving). In English it may be preceded by for or to. The girl sings a song for her father; She gives the book to her friend. Sometimes the to is understood: The girl gives her friend the book.

Ablative Words that in modern English and French would be preceded by in, by, with, from, out of, or about are said to be in the ablative case. Examples: by the river; in the house; out of Africa; with a friend.

The easiest way to explain all this is by example. I am going to translate some very simple sentences into Latin so that you can see how inflexion works.

Points to note:

1) There are three genders in Latin. Nouns are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. In most modern Romance languages nouns are either masculine or feminine, but Roumanian has retained the neuter form.

2) Latin has no indefinite or definite article. Puella means a girl, or the girl, according to the context. The modern French definite article, le, la, les, developed from the Latin demonstrative pronoun ille, illa, illud, which means that (over there). Winnie the Pooh has been translated into Latin as Winnie ille Pu.

3) The verb almost always comes at the end of a sentence or clause, but can be placed elsewhere for emphasis. The exception is the verb to be, which can be placed anywhere.

4) Note how, in the examples below, the possessive adjective my changes according to the gender and case of the noun it qualifies (describes), and not the sex of the possessor.

Vocabulary

my ........................... meus (masculine), mea (feminine)

daughter ................ filia (fem)

is ........................... est

garden ................... hortus (masc)

likes ...................... amat

boy ....................... puer (masc)

brother ................. frater (masc)

friend ................... amicus (masc)

dining-room .......... triclinium (neut)

sister .................... soror (fem)

rose ...................... rosa (fem)

Examples

My daughter is in the garden.

Filia mea in horto est. or Filia mea est in horto. or Est in horto filia mea. or Est filia mea in horto. or In horto filia mea est.

The sentences above illustrate what I mean by flexible word order. They are all saying the same thing. What has changed is the emphasis: in the third and fifth examples the speaker is laying stress on his/her daughter's whereabouts. Not how hortus has changed its ending to show that it is in the ablative case.

My daughter likes the boy.

Filia mea puerum amat. or Puerum filia mea amat.

The boy likes my daughter.

Puer filiam meam amat, or Filiam meam puer amat.

In the two preceding sentences English changes the word order to show who likes whom. Word order in Latin makes no difference (except for emphasis).

To avoid information overload I shall not show variant word order in the following sentences. This does not mean it is not possible.

My brother's friend is in the dining-room.

Amicus fratris mei in triclinio est.

My friend's brother is in the dining-room.

Frater amici mei in triclinio est.

My sister likes roses.

Soror mea rosas amat.

My friend gives my sister roses.

Amicus meus sorori meae rosas dat.

I hope this has whetted your appetite for more. If so, have a look at my Language Links page. If you'd like to see a bit of 'modern' Latin, go here.

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