Latin/2nd Declension Lesson 3

Salvēte omnēs!

New Grammar
The genitive case is used to show possession, or more broadly, in expressions that use “of” in English. The genitive singular is the marker that tells us what declension a noun belongs in: for the 2nd declension, the genitive singular ending is –ī and the genitive plural is –ōrum. This is true whether the noun is masculine or neuter in gender. Because the gen. s. ending -ī helps us to classify the nouns in the 2nd declension it is standard to list all nouns with nom. and gen. s. Thus the listing:
 * medicus, ī = doctor

tells us that it is a second declension noun because of the –ī ending in the genitive singular, it is masculine because of the –us ending in the nom., and when we look specifically at the form medicī we could translate it either as “the doctor’s” or “of the doctor.” Since it is a masculine noun, medicī could also be the nominative plural form "the doctors"; the difference has to be determined by context. This gets easier with practice.

Practice
In the next lesson we will look at the use of the dative case in the 2nd declension. Thank you for following along. Valēte!