No Articles

Welcome to the Latin course!

There are no articles in Latin! The sentence "Ego vir sum." could mean "I
am a man." but also "I am the man." However, don't forget to use the
correct articles when translating into English!

Personal Pronouns

Personal subject pronouns are used for emphasis and can be left out.

Example: Ego vir sum. = Vir sum

Latin English
ego I
tu you (sg)
is, ea* he, she
nos we
vos you (pl)
ii, eae* they

*Forms of the demonstrative pronoun is, ea, id

Word Order

Latin is very flexible. The most common structure is SOV (subject -

object - verb), especially in prose, but there are many other possibilities,
depending on what you want to emphasize.

Gender

Latin has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. In this first skill
you will only encounter masculine and feminine nouns.

First declension nouns are (generally) feminine nouns ending in -a in the

nominative case. Examples are femina and puella.

Second declension nouns are (generally) masculine nouns ending in -us

Second declension nouns are (generally) masculine nouns ending in -us
and (generally) neuter nouns ending in -um in the nominative case.
Examples are the names Stephanus and Marcus. Vir and puer are
masculine nouns that follow the second declension as well.

To Be

In this skill you will learn the singular forms of the verb to be (esse, sum).

Latin English
sum I am
es you are
est he, she, it is

Pronunciation

This course uses Classical Pronunciation. A few things worth noting:

V sounds like the English W

C always sounds like a K
G is always hard and never J
AE sounds like the English word "eye"

Cases

Latin uses grammatical cases: words change when they get a different
function in a sentence.

Nominative
The nominative case is the form of a noun you will find a dictionary. It is
used for the subject of a sentences and for predicates following a form of
"to be".

You can find a subject by asking the question "Who/What + verb?"

Example:

The man is sleeping. Who is sleeping? -> The man

I love you. Who loves you? -> I

The predicate is the second part of a sentence following the "X is Y"
pattern.
Example:

I am a man. -> a man

These women are engineers. -> engineers

Declension Ending
1st -a
2nd (masc.) -us
2nd (neut.) -um

Translation of Names

A little convention: we will not accept translations of names as

alternatives in this course. Marcus's name is Marcus, not Mark, and
Stephanus is not Stephen or Steven.

New Vocabulary

Latin English Additional Info (Declension, gender, etc.)

femina woman 1st, fem.
vir man 2nd, masc.

puer boy 2nd, masc.

puella girl 1st, fem.
pater father 3rd, masc.
mater mother 3rd, fem.
soror sister 3rd, fem.
frater brother 3rd, masc.
non not
et and
sed but
quis who?
dormit he, she sleeps
studet he, she studies
scribit he, she writes
in urbe in the city
domi at home