Latin/3rd Declension Lesson 2

Salvēte omnēs!

Here we go with a second lesson exploring the 3rd declension of Latin nouns. For a guide to previous lessons and a classified vocabulary list, be sure to check out the links on the right.

New Grammar
Last lesson we looked at the basic grammatical divisions of 3rd declension nouns and some of the rules/guidelines for sorting them out; and we studied the nominative and accusative cases for these nouns. I highly recommend a lot of review for 3rd declension nouns since there are so many irregularities, so you may want to check over that lesson one more time, linked above.

This week’s lesson will focus on the ablative case. As we’ve seen before with the 1st and second declensions, the ablative case is used to express the object of certain prepositions. But it also is used for so many more functions, and we're going to introduce one additional use today: the ablative of means. Compare the following sentences:


 * Mīlitēs cum hominibus pugnant. = The soldiers fight with the men.

cum hominibus is a prepositional phrase, with hominibus being the abl. pl object of the prep. “With the men” means in the same physical space as the men, but the men are not being picked up and used as weapons or instruments. Cum is the required preposition for ablative of accompaniment.
 * Mīlitēs gladiīs pugnant. = The soldiers fight with the swords/by means of swords.

This is an example of the ablative of means. Here gladius is also in the ablative plural and in English is expressed as a prepositional phrase; however in Latin no preposition is needed to show the non-living means or instrument; the ablative case alone does this.
 * Cum virtūte pugnat. = He fights with courage/in a courageous manner.

This is an example of the ablative of manner. Unlike the ablative of means which always uses concrete nouns/things, the ablative of manner always uses abstract/intangible nouns. To make things extra confusing, we have to use cum with this ablative use UNLESS there is a modifying adjective, in which case it’s optional. I’ll include a few of these but there will be a need for much more extensive ablative lessons later on.

Now, just to keep things interesting, we will also introduce a few new prepositions; and these are prepositions that take an accusative object. (We could have introduced them last lesson but there was already so much content to include.) Most Latin prepositions take either accusative or ablative case, and it’s best to memorize which one when you study vocab. in is a special preposition because it can use either case as object, with a change of meaning.

Ablative singular ending for the 3rd declension is -e; ablative plural is -ibus. We’ll also be mixing in a few ablatives from previous declensions to keep those in practice.

Practice
Thank you for following along with these lessons. We hope they are helpful.

Habēte bonam fortūnam!