18 Cases
“The case of a noun tells you what grammatical function the noun plays in a sentence. The five essential cases are Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, and Ablative. Today we will study three of these, the Nominative, Genitive, and Accusative.”
“The Nominative Case is used for words that are the Subject or Predicate of a sentence. The Predicate comes after the verb ‘is’ in English, or any other verb that indicates a state of being. The underlined words would be in the Nominative Case in Latin:”
The country (subject) is not a Republic (predicate).
I (subj.) will become both your friend (pred.) and your enemy (pred.). “The Subject Pronouns I taught you earlier are all Nominative.”
“When you look up a noun in the dictionary, you will see its Nominative Singular form first.
Each of these four declensions (families) has a characteristic nominative ending:”
Nominative Singular Endings (A)
EndingStem + EndingMeaning
1st declension:-avi-away (subject or predicate) 2nd declension:-usamīc-usfriend (subj. or pred.)
4th declension:-usman-ushand (subj. or pred.) 5th declension:-ēsr-ēsthing (subj. or pred.)
“Some 2nd Declension Nouns, like vir and puer, end in the letter r in the nominative; they do not add –us in the nominative.”
“The Genitive Case signifies a relationship between two words, often possession. English often translates a genitive by adding ‘of’. The underlined words would be in the Genitive in Latin; note that the ‘of’ is not conveyed in Latin by a separate word:”
The friend of the man is late.
The mind of the enemy is cunning.
“The Genitive Singular form is important because it tells you what Declension the noun belongs to – no other case form does that. This is the second word a Latin dictionary will show you; most dictionaries will not specify what declension a noun is, because you are expected to figure it out from the genitive singular. So:”
If the Genitive Singular ends with…… the Declension is:
-ae1st declension
-ī2nd declension
-ūs4th declension
-eī5th declension
“Another important thing to learn is the Genitive-Stem Rule. TO OBTAIN THE STEM OF A NOUN, REMOVE THE GENITIVE SINGULAR ENDING FROM THE GENITIVE
SINGULAR FORM. (B) You cannot determine the stem based on the nominative singular form; look to the genitive singular form.”
Genitive Singular Endings (C)
EndingStem + EndingTranslation 1st declension:-aevīt-aeof life
2nd declension:-īpuer-īof the boy 4th declension:-ūsSenāt-ūsof the Senate 5th declension:-eīsp-eīof hope
“The Accusative Case is used when a word is the Object of a Verb. The Object Pronouns you learned are all Accusative. The underlined nouns would be in the Accusative Case in Latin:”
The boy was planning the day (object of ‘was planning’).
The man and the woman will need to love trustworthiness (obj. of ‘to love’).
“The Accusative Singular form is created by taking the stem and adding the following endings. Notice that they all end in –m – this is a very helpful clue to the accusative. Also, the vowels follow the same pattern as the nominative endings: a u u e, followed by the letter m:”
Accusative Singular Endings (D)
EndingStem + EndingTranslation
1st declension:ampatri-amcountry (object)
2nd declension:umde-umgod (object)
4th declension:umman-umhand (object)
5th declension:emdi-emday (object)