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This course is designed to provide you with the foundational skills necessary to begin reading and writing in Latin. This course will cover Classical Latin, which means that Medieval and Ecclesiastical Latin will not be covered in these course materials (although they are similar).

It is hoped that during this course, you will learn:
 * The basic structure of Latin grammar
 * How to decline a noun
 * How to conjugate a verb
 * How to form an adjective

Study Tips and Resources
Andrew Reinhard has recently published a well-researched article ( “From Slate to Tablet PC: Using New Technologies to Teach and Learn Latin and Greek") listing on-line resources for students studying Ancient Greek and Latin, in Classical Journal Online, picked up later and stored on the Wheelock's Latin page

Tips

Learning Latin is easier if you are willing to develop your capacity to memorize. Use any mnemonic device you can to memorize vocabulary and grammatical charts. The grammar charts are designed to be compact enough to fit into your memory, but memorizing the charts is not quite enough in itself--you have to think about what each chart means. Grammar is simply an efficient way to break down language into meaningful categories.

The Very Basics of Case Structure
Latin can be a challenging language to learn, especially at the outset. The number of forms may seem daunting but a lot of them are the same and everything follows a set pattern, so don't worry. The first thing to learn about Latin is its case system. In English, the sentence 'I kick the bucket' is made up of three parts. 'I' is the subject of the sentence. The subject performs the action. 'Kick' is the verb. The verb is the action which is performed by the subject. 'The bucket' is the object of the sentence. The object receives the action performed by the subject.

Synopsis:
 * Subject: The one performing the action. e.g. The cow kicks me; I want that; this meal is delicious. In Latin, the subject is referred to as the nominative subject.
 * Verb: The action being performed. e.g. The cow kicks me; I want that; this meal is delicious.
 * Object: The one receiving the action. e.g. The cow kicks me; I want that; There is no object in the third example. In Latin, the object is referred to as the accusative direct object.

Nouns
In English, the difference between the nominative subject and the accusative direct object is determined by their order in the sentence. For example, the sentence 'The sailor loves the girl' has a different meaning than 'the girl loves the sailor'. In Latin, however, the meaning of a sentence is instead determined by endings added to the words, called "inflections".

To illustrate this better, let's introduce some basic vocabulary. The form for these examples is ''Nominative, Genitive, Gender. Translation''.


 * puella, puellae, f. girl
 * nauta, nautae, m. sailor

For now, let's look at the nominative nouns, puella and nauta. If the word is being used as the nominative subject, it will keep its -a ending. When it's used as the accusative direct object, it has an -am ending. Because the order of the nouns make no difference, 'Puella amat nautam' and 'Nautam amat puella' both mean 'the girl loves the sailor'. Puella has the nominative -a ending, and nautam has the accusative -am ending. To reverse the meaning, reverse the endings. 'Puellam amat nauta' means 'the sailor loves the girl'.

Note: Even though the order of words in the sentence doesn't matter, Latin grammar rules state that sentences have the nominative object at the beginning of the sentence, then the indirect subject, then the direct subject, and lastly, the verb. Also, prepositions are usually placed near their objects.

By this point we know the nominative (subject) case and the accusative (direct object) case. Latin has five cases in all, each with a different purpose in the sentence. In the examples below, the singular and plural endings are given next to name of the case. The horizontal bar over ā is called a macron, and indicates that the vowel is long, stressed differently than the short -a of the nominative case.

Ideas in Latin can be expressed succinctly using these five cases. To say 'I give the book to the girl' the Latin would use puellae instead of to the puellam. (The sentence would read Do librum puellae.)

1st declension

The first declension is quite simple.The endings for the first declension are below. To find the stem drop the genitive noun ending The genitive singular ending determines to which declension a noun belongs. In the first declension most nouns are feminine. Except for nauta, agricola, poeta which are all masculine.
 * Ex.  aquae - ae= aqu

edit by GermanGamboaJr 04:16, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Declensions
Now, all the nouns we used above are referred to as first declension nouns --i.e., nouns that end in -a (e.g., insula, puella) and form their genitive with -ae (e.g., nautae, puellae). There are five declensions in Latin: the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. Nouns belonging to the first, second, and third declensions are seen most often.

Gender

Like other Romance languages, all nouns in Latin display gender. First declension nouns tend to be feminine, second declension nouns are masculine (mostly) or neuter ("neither"). But just because a noun is in the first declension, do not assume that its gender is feminine. "Sailor", nauta, is a masculine first declension noun. Since adjectives are determined by gender, make note of a noun's gender when you learn it.

Dictionary Entry

The dictionary entry provides the least information necessary to fully recognize a noun. This means you must learn to read concise dictionary entries. The dictionary entry of a noun begins with its nominative and genitive singular forms, and its gender. From these three items (1) a noun's declension can be determined, and (2) any adjectives modifying it can be detected.

Since the five noun declensions all display the genitive singular form differently, the genitive singular form is a sure determinant of a noun's declension. This is why the genitive singular form is included in the dictionary entry. Furthermore, as mentioned above, any adjectives describing a noun will share its gender, and this is indicated in the dictionary entry by m., f., or n.

Verbs
To make things easy, we'll start verbs by using the verb "to be". This is the basic form of a verb is is usually translated as "I am", "He is", "You are", etc. Below is a conjugation chart for the verb "to be":

A verb can be translated on of three ways: Simple, Progressive, and Emphatic. However, the verb "to be" can only be translated in the progressive.

Vocabulary
This is your vocabulary for this section.

Nouns

 * Femina, feminae f. woman
 * Insula, insulae f. island
 * Terra, terrae f. earth, land
 * Puella, puellae f. girl
 * Taeda, taedae f. torch
 * Aqua, aquae f. water
 * Domina, dominae f. lady, mistress
 * Silva, silvae f. woods, forest
 * Via, viae f. way, road, street
 * Villa, villae f. farmhouse, villa, house (large)

Verbs
(see the translations in the verb section)

Prepositions

 * in in, on, at
 * sub under, beneath, at the foot of
 * cum with

Exercises
'In this exercise, give the number (singular or plural) and case'' of the noun. A number next to the word indicates the number of correct answers.'''

Example: Puellae (3). Nominative plural; Genitive singular; Dative singular.

1. Puella

2. Silvae*

3. Insulīs*

4. Taedā

5. Feminārum

6. Villam

7. Aquae*

8. Terrīs*

9. Dominae*

10. Viās

*Words with this icon may have more than one meaning.

Translate these sentences into English.

Example: Insulam dat nautae puella. The girl gives the island to the sailor.

1. Puella es.

2. Feminae in villā sunt.

3. Cum puellīs sumus.

4. In insulā estis.

5. Aqua sub terrīs est.

LATIN
Latin is an Indo-European language which was influenced by Ancient Greek and Etruscan, amongst others. Spoken in Ancient Rome, and closely related to a number of other ancient Italic languages such as Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan and Venetic, it eventually evolved into the Romance languages spoken today.

Table of Contents

 * 1) /Nouns/
 * 2) /First Declension/
 * 3) second declension
 * 4) masculine
 * 5) neuter
 * 6) R nouns

Grammar
Latin grammar is the root of nearly all Romance languages. Many constructions in Romance languages remain virtually unchanged from their Latin counterparts. For instance, the ending of verbs determines the person (first, second, or third) and the number (singular or plural), and nouns and adjectives possess genders.

Usually, the basic word order is loosely based on "Subject Object Verb", similar to Spanish or even Japanese. However, this is not a universal rule. Unlike English, in which sentences derive much of their meaning from the order in which the words are placed, Latin sentences can be scrambled to some degree and still make sense. This is because the endings of the nouns and the verbs tell the word's function in a sentence. (See Nouns and verbs). For an example, all of the following sentences mean "I eat bread" in Latin: Ego panem edo, Ego edo panem, Panem ego edo, Panem edo ego. An exception to this rule is prepositions, which almost always remain in front of the word(s) that they modify; for instance, in the sentence "I eat bread in the forum", the words "in the forum" must be rendered in Latin as in foro in that exact order, even though the remainder of the sentence can be mixed around as in the previous example (e.g. Ego panem edo in foro and Panem in foro edo ego).

Verbs are conjugated but there are no such things as "helper (auxiliary) verbs" as there are in English, such as "had" in the sentence "I had eaten", only different endings for each tense/person/mood/etc.

The essential present active endings are: For an example of what this means: "I love" is rendered in Latin as [Ego] amo (first person singular), whereas "We love" is rendered as [Nos] amamus (first person plural). Note that because the person and number is 'built into' the Latin verb (i.e. the endings), the use of ego and nos in these examples is redundant (although not incorrect). Put another way, the sentence Ego amo can be rendered as Amo and it holds the same meaning; likewise Nos amamus means the exact same thing as Amamus. This will be explored further in the section on verbs.
 * 1st person singular: -o
 * 2nd person singular: -s
 * 3rd person singular: -t
 * 1st person plural: -mus
 * 2nd person plural: -tis
 * 3rd person plural: -nt

Nouns


The First Three Declensions:


 * Cases
 * Latin nouns can change their endings according to cases, as listed in the chart above.
 * A list of the cases and their basic functions.
 * Nominative - used for subject or subjective completion.
 * "Cornelia amat puellam." (Cornelia loves the girl.) "Cornelia" is in the nominative case because it is the subject of the sentence.
 * Genitive - used for a noun to modify another noun, specifically possession, description, or partitive. Often translated into English with the addition of the word "of".
 * "Corneliae felis" (Cornelia's cat) Possessive.
 * "Cornelia est puella magnae sapientiae. (Cornelia is a girl of great wisdom.) Partitive.
 * "amphora plena vini (a vase full of wine) Descriptive
 * Dative - used to indicate an indirect object. Often translated into English with the addition of the words "to" or "for".
 * Marcus cani pretium dat. (Marcus gave a reward to the dog.)
 * Accusative - primarily direct object. Some prepositions take the accusative but only when it is motion toward something.
 * Cornelia ovum consumit. (Cornelia eats an egg)
 * Cornelia ad forum ambulat. (Cornelia walks to the forum) Example of the accusative being used with a preposition (in this case "ad") to express motion towards
 * Ablative - Object of any preposition that is not an expression of motion towards, in addition to means, manner in which, agent, and in a construction called the ablative absolute.
 * Flos ex terra erumpit (The flower erupts from the ground) Example of the ablative being used with a preposition (in this case "ex") to express separation
 * Vocative - Direct Address.
 * Et tu, Brute? (And you [too], Brutus?)
 * There also exists a very rarely used seventh case called the Locative, and it is used to show the location of something. The locative case is somewhat vestigial and is only used in certain situations when referring to the names of cities, "small" islands and a few other isolated words
 * Cornelia Romae habit. (Cornelia lives in Rome.)

Practice
Vocabulary:
 * puella, -ae, f. girl
 * sub, prep. underneath, under
 * arbor, -oris, f. a tree
 * sedeo sedere sedi sessum, to sit

Example: Puella sub arbore sedet. The girl sits (or is sitting or does sit) under the tree.

Verbs
Latin verbs are quite like the verbs of other languages, such as Spanish. Each verb usually has 4 principle parts (a good amount of them only have 3). Latin verbs are formed on the basis of a root and an ending.

Lets start with an example: amo, amare, amavi, amatus; To love

The first principle part is the 1st person present active singular indicative form of the verb. In the case of amo, this is translated as "I love", or "I am loving".

The second principle part is the present active infinitive. To translate, its just "to [verb]" (e.g. "to eat", "to sleep", "to dance"). The infinitive usually ends with are, ere, or ire. In our case of amo, the second principle part is amare, which means "to love". The infinitive dictates the root used for many forms of the verb.

The third principle part is the 1st singular perfect active indicative. The perfect case is translated as a completed action. Our amavi is translated as "I loved". The 3rd principle part shows the root for much of the perfect system.

The fourth principle part is the perfect passive participle (often abbreviated as the PPP). The PPP is a participle, in the past tense. Amatus would be translated as "having been loved" The perfect passive participle is very important for passives in Latin verbs.

The key idea is that Latin verbs have 4 principle parts, and what each principle part means.