Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood. The inflections are often changes in the ending of a word, but can be more complicated, especially with verbs.
Thus verbs can take any of over 100 different endings to express different meanings, for example "I rule", "I am ruled", "to rule", "to be ruled". Most verbal forms consist of a single word, but some tenses are formed from part of the verb "I am" added to a participle; for example, "I was led" or "he is going to lead".
Nouns belong to one of three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). The gender of the noun is shown by the last syllables of the adjectives, numbers and pronouns that refer to it: e.g. "this man", "this woman", "this war". There are also two numbers: singular ( "woman") and plural ( "women").
As well as having gender and number, nouns, adjectives, and pronouns have different endings according to their function in the sentence, for example, "the king" (subject), but "the king" (object). These different endings are called "cases". Most nouns have five cases: nominative (subject or complement), accusative (object), genitive ("of"), dative ("to" or "for"), and ablative ("with", "in", "by" or "from"). Nouns for people (potential addressees) have the vocative (used for addressing someone). Some nouns for places have a seventh case, the locative; this is mostly found with the names of towns and cities, e.g. "in Rome". Adjectives must agree with their nouns in gender, number, and case.
When a noun or pronoun is used with a preposition, the noun must be in either the accusative or the ablative case, depending on the preposition. Thus "to, near" is always followed by an accusative case, but "from, out of" is always followed by an ablative. The preposition is followed by the ablative when it means "in, on", but by the accusative when it means "into, onto".
There is no definite or indefinite article in Latin, so that can mean "king", "a king", or "the king" according to context.
Latin word order tends to be subject–object–verb; however, other word orders are common. Different word orders are used to express different shades of emphasis. (See Latin word order.)
An adjective can come either before or after a noun, e.g. or "a good man", although some kinds of adjectives, such as adjectives of nationality ( "a Roman man") usually follow the noun.
Latin is a pro-drop language; that is, pronouns in the subject are usually omitted except for emphasis, so for example by itself means "you love" without the need to add the pronoun "you". Latin also exhibits verb framing in which the path of motion is encoded into the verb rather than shown by a separate word or phrase. For example, the Latin verb (a compound of and ) means "he/she/it goes out".
In this article a line over a vowel used on ā, ē, ī, ō, ū and ȳ is called a macron and it indicates that it is long.
Nouns Number Most Latin nouns have two numbers, singular and plural: "king", "kings". A few nouns, called ("plural only"), although plural in form, have a singular meaning, e.g. "a camp", "a letter", "a wedding".
Gender Nouns are divided into three genders, known as masculine, feminine, and neuter. The difference is shown in the pronouns and adjectives that refer to them, for example: "the king himself" (masculine) "the queen herself" (feminine) "the war itself" (neuter)
To a certain extent, the genders follow the meanings of the words (for example, winds are masculine, tree-names feminine):
Masculine nouns include all those referring to males, such as "master", "boy", "god", but also some inanimate objects such as "garden", "army", "custom". Words in the 2nd declension ending in -us or -er are usually masculine. Feminine nouns include all those referring to females, such as "girl", "woman", "goddess", but also inanimate or abstract nouns such as "tree", "city", "kindness", "nation". Words in the 1st declension like ending in -a are usually feminine, with a few exceptions such as "poet". Also feminine are 3rd declension nouns ending in -tās and -tiō. Neuter nouns (apart from "a prostitute (of either gender)") all refer to things, such as "name", "body", "war", "poison".
Neuter nouns differ from masculine and feminine in two ways: (1) the plural nominative and accusative forms end in -a, e.g. "wars", "bodies"; (2) the subject (nominative) and object (accusative) cases are identical.
Case Nouns in Latin have a series of different forms, called cases of the noun, which have different functions or meanings. For example, the word for "king" is when it is the subject of a verb, but when it is the object: "the king sees" (nominative case) "(he) sees the king" (accusative case)
Further cases mean "of" (genitive case), "to/for" (dative case), and "with" (ablative case).
Nouns for people have a separate form used for addressing a person (vocative case). In most nouns for women and girls, the vocative is the same as the nominative.
Some nouns, such as the names of cities and small islands, and the word "home", have a seventh case called the locative, for example "in Rome" or "at home"; however, most nouns do not have this case.
The genitive, dative and ablative cases are called the "oblique" cases.
The order in which the cases are given in grammar books differs in different countries. In Britain and countries influenced by Britain, the order nominative, vocative, accusative is used as in the table below. In the United States, in grammars such as Gildersleeve and Lodge's Latin Grammar (1895), the traditional order is used, with the genitive case in the second place and ablative last. In the popularly used Wheelock's Latin (1956, 7th edition 2011) and Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar (1903), however, the vocative is placed at the end.
The following table shows the endings of a typical noun of the 3rd declension. If Gildersleeve and Lodge's order is preferred, click on the symbol "GL" in the seventh column in the table below; for Wheelock's order click on "Wh":
Name of caseUsesing.meaningplur.meaning Br GL Wh Nominative Subject a king, the king kings, the kings 1 1 1 Vocative Addressing o king! o kings! 2 5 6 Accusative Object, goal a king, the king (object) kings, the kings (object) 3 4 4 Genitive of of the king, of a king of kings, of the kings 4 2 2 Dative to, for to the king to kings, to the kings 5 3 3 Ablative with, by, from, in with the king with the kings 6 6 5
Sometimes the same endings, e.g. and , are used for more than one case. Since the function of a word in Latin is shown by ending rather than word order, in theory could mean either "the kings lead" or "they lead the kings". In practice, however, such ambiguities are rare.
Declensions
1st and 2nd declensions Latin nouns are divided into different groups according to the patterns of their case endings. These different groups are known as declensions. Nouns with -a in the nominative singular, like "girl", are known as "1st declension nouns", and so on.
The following table shows the declension of "girl" (1st declension), "lord, master" (2nd declension masculine), and "war" (2nd declension neuter):
CasefemininemasculineneuterBrGLWh1 sg.1 pl.2 sg.2 pl.2n sg.2n pl. Nominative 1 1 1 Vocative 2 5 6 Accusative 3 4 4 Genitive 4 2 2 Dative 5 3 3 Ablative 6 6 5
1st declension nouns are usually feminine, except for a few referring to men, such as "farmer" or "poet". The nouns "daughter" and "goddess" have dative and ablative plural . The locative case ends in -ae, pl. -īs, e.g. "in Rome", "in Athens".
2nd declension nouns in -us are usually masculine, but those referring to trees (e.g. "pine tree") and some place names (e.g. "Egypt") are feminine. A few 2nd declension nouns, such as "man" and "boy", lack endings in the nominative and vocative singular. In the 2nd declension, the genitive plural in some words is optionally -um, especially in poetry: or "of the gods", or "of men".
Neuter nouns such as "war" have -a in the nominative plural. In neuter nouns, the vocative and accusative are always the same as the nominative; the genitive, dative, and ablative are the same as the masculine. Most 2nd declension neuter nouns end in -um but "poison" and "crowd" end in -us.
3rd declension Third declension nouns have various patterns of declension. Some decline like the following: "soldier", "city", "body":
CasemasculinefeminineneuterBrGLWh3 sg.3 pl.3 sg.3 pl.3n sg.3n pl. Nominative 1 1 1 Vocative 2 5 6 Accusative 3 4 4 Genitive 4 2 2 Dative 5 3 3 Ablative 6 6 5
There are some variations, however. A few, such as "force", have accusative singular -im and ablative singular -ī; some, like "fire", optionally have -ī instead of -e in the ablative singular. The genitive plural in some nouns is -um, in others -ium. (For details, see Latin declension.) 3rd declension nouns can be of any gender.
It is not usually possible to guess the genitive of a noun from the nominative: "leader" has genitive but "king" has ; "father" has genitive but "journey" has . For this reason the genitive is always given in dictionaries, and can be used to deduce the remaining cases.
4th and 5th declensions 4th and 5th declension nouns are less common. They decline like the following ( "hand", "knee", "day"):
CasefeminineneuterBrGLWh4 sg.4 pl.4 sg.4 pl.5 sg.5 pl. Nominative 1 1 1 Vocative 25 6 Accusative 34 4 Genitive 4 2 2 Dative 5 3 3 Ablative 6 6 5
4th declension nouns are usually masculine, but a few, such as "hand" and "old lady", are feminine. There are only four 4th declension neuter nouns.
5th declension nouns (except for (m) "day") are usually feminine. "thing" is similar to except for a short e in the genitive and dative singular .
Other nouns In addition to the above there are some irregularly declined nouns, mostly borrowed from Greek, such as the name "Aeneas" (1st declension masculine).
The vocative is nearly always the same as the nominative, except in 1st and 2nd declension masculine singular words, such as "Aeneas!" and "master!/lord!". Some words, such as "god", have no separate vocative, however.
Use of cases
Nominative The nominative case is used for the subject of an active or a passive verb: = the king replied = the king was killed
It is also used for the complement of a copula verb such as "he is" or "he became": = our king was Aeneas / Aeneas was our king = he was made king / he became king
Vocative The vocative case is used when addressing someone: = do you order me, King Romulus, to strike a treaty?
Accusative The accusative case is used for the object of a sentence: = they killed the king
It is also used as the subject of an infinitival clause dependent on a verb of speaking or the like: = they believed that the king had been killed
It can be the complement of another word which is itself accusative: = the people made Tullus their king
It can also be used with a place name to refer to the destination: = he set out for Rome
The accusative is also used after various prepositions (especially those that imply motion towards): = the Senate sent ambassadors to the king = the consul returned to the city
Another use of the accusative is to give a length of time or distance: = he reigned for five years = five foot tall
Genitive A genitive noun can represent possession or relationship: = the king's daughter, daughter of the king
A genitive noun can stand for the object of mental processes such as "I pity" and "I forget": = I will never forget that nightCicero, Planc. 101.
A genitive noun attached to a verbal noun can stand for the object of the implied verb (called an "objective genitive"): = my longing for the great manPliny the Younger, Ep. 6.11.1.