Latin Grammar - Nouns

Nouns

Detailed information and declension tables can be found at Latin declension.

Nouns (including proper nouns and pronouns) have:

• six cases (Latin: casus): nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative (special nouns have a seventh "locative" case)

  three genders (Latin: genus): masculine, feminine and neuter, which serve a grammatical function, and not necessarily to distinguish the sex of the object

  two numbers (Latin: numerus): singular and plural.

Declining is the process of inflecting nouns; a set of declined forms of the same word is called a declension. Most adjectives, pronouns, and participles indicate the gender of the noun they refer to or modify.

Most nouns in the 1st declension are feminine; most in the 2nd are either masculine or neuter; Nouns in the 3rd can be masculine, feminine and neuter (3rd consonant decl.), feminine and neuter (3rd vocal decl.) and masculine and feminine (3rd mixed(?) decl.); nouns in the 4th are usually masculine; and in the 5th they are all feminine except two.

It is necessary to learn the gender of each noun because it is impossible to discern the gender from the word itself sometimes. One must also memorize to which declension each noun belongs in order to be able to decline it. Therefore, Latin nouns are often memorized with their genitive (rex, regis) as this gives a good indication for the declension to use and reveals the stem of the word (reg-, not rex).

• The nominative case, which is used to express the subject of a statement or following a coupula verb:

  servus ad villam ambulat.

  The slave walks to the house.

• The genitive case, which expresses possession, measurement, or source. In English, the preposition of is used to denote this case, or, in the case of possession, the English possessive construction:

  servus laborat in villa domini.

  The slave works in the house of the master. or The slave works in the master's house.

• The dative case, which expresses the recipient of an action, the indirect object of a verb. It also is used to represent agency in a construction with a passive periphrastic. In English, the prepositions to and for most commonly denote this case:

  servi tradiderunt pecuniam dominis.

  The slaves handed over the money to the masters.

N.B. The dative is never the object of a Latin preposition.

• The accusative case, which expresses the direct object of a verb or direction or extent of motion and may be the object of a preposition:

  dominus servos vituperabat quod non laborabant.

  The master cursed the slaves because they were not working.

• The ablative case, (may or may not be preceded by a preposition) which expresses separation, indirection, or the means by which an action is performed. In English, the prepositions by, with, and from most commonly denote this case:

  dominus in cubiculo dormiebat.

  The master was sleeping in his bedroom

• The vocative case, which is used to address someone or something in direct speech.

  festina, serve!

  Hurry, slave!

• The locative case, which is used to express the place in or on which, or the time at which, an action is performed. The locative case is extremely marginal in Latin, applying only to the names of cities and small islands and to a few other isolated words. All other nouns use the ablative with a preposition to serve the same purpose. In form, it is identical to the genitive case in the singular of the first and second declension, and the ablative case otherwise, with the exception of the noun "domus" (home), which has the locative "domi".

  servus Romae erat.

  The slave was in Rome.