Lesson 2 - Overview of Nouns

NUMBERS 
- singular or plural


GENDERS
- masculine, feminine, neuter or common


CASES

Various terminations assumed by nouns (adjectives and pronouns as well) according to their function in the sentence.

a. NOMINATIVE 

– denotes the subject of the verb 

– answers Who? What? 

b. GENITIVE 

– denotes possessive case 

– answers Who’s? Of what? 

- “of” or ‘s or s’ 

c. DATIVE 

- denotes indirect object 

- answers To whom? For whom? 

- to/for

d. ACCUSATIVE 

- denotes direct object 

- answers Whom? What? 

- Used with preposition 

e. ABLATIVE 

- Expresses means, instrument, manner, separation 

- answers Where? When? Whence? By or with what? 

- Used with preposition 

- By/in/with/from 

f. VOCATIVE 

- Denotes direct address or the person addressed. 

g. LOCATIVE 

- survives in certain restricted uses; it has largely been absorbed by the ablative case

DECLENSION

-To decline a word à to enumerate all its cases 

Example:

The boy loves the girl 

Puer ama puellam 

- Latin nouns are declined in 5 different ways. So there are 5 declensions which are distinguished from one another by the terminations of the genitive singular, as follows. 

I = -ae 

II = i 

III = is 

IV = us 

V = ei