Latin Declension Endings

This is from a Latin course I took in high school. It really is not something that you would probably expect on this site, but is interesting and relates very marginally to the elementary education section that is here. Hopefully, it intrigues some to look into Latin as the history is interesting and can relate to modern times. Reading the stories of many of the Roman emperors would probably interest many and is worth the read.

Latin has five cases:

1. Nominative – Subject
2. Genitive – Possession (‘s or of)
3. Dative – Indirect Object
4. Accusative – Direct Object
5. Ablative – Object of Preposition

Present System

(I love, I am loving, I do love)

-0                  -mus                       amo (I love)                                                 amamus (We love)

-s                   -tis                           amas (You love)                                         amatis (You plural love)

-t                  -nt                            amat (He, She, It loves)                           amant (They love)

You can see in English it is ‘I love,’ in Latin, you take amar and drop the -ar and add an ‘-o’. It gets kind of complicated with different tenses, but in your native language you probably change tenses without even realizing it and don’t see it as complicated. It takes a while to get used to, but is possible and can become easy. The declension endings correlate to words that end in -a, -ē, -e, and -ī. The macrons are important. When the verb ends in -āre, -ēre, -ere, and -īre they are infinitives and are translated as to plus a verb (e.g. iuvāre means to help). Forgive me if this wrong as this high school Latin course was many years ago. This is more a taste of Latin, which is similar to modern romance languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian and 60% of English words have roots/meanings from Latin. I am certain the present tense and five cases and declension endings here are correct. English uses the Roman or Latin alphabet. Latin lives on in history and similarities and ties to modern languages. It is barely spoken, probably only the Vatican in Rome is the only place where it is spoken and maybe some small groups of Latin scholars. However, it lives on through similar languages such as Italian and has a remarkable history and civilization that has lived on and influenced modern times. Just an interesting side note is that the Romans stole the alphabet from the Greeks. For some time most the empire spoke Greek, but the ruling class spoke Latin. If you look at the Greek alphabet the first letter, alpha, is like a triangle and is similar to the Roman ‘a’ which is also like a triangle. Hebrew, also from the Mediterranean region, has an aleph for the first letter of the alphabet is more like a triangle than the other letters. However, the vowels for Hebrew are different and the aleph does not sound exactly like an ‘a.’ Below are the five Latin declension endings.

Nouns

First Declension                                    Second Declension                                               Third Declension

a                      ae                                      us/er/um                       ī/a                                   -/-                        ēs/a                                                Nominative

ae                    ārum                                ī                                        orum                              is                          um                                                 Genitive

ae                    īs                                        ō                                       īs                                       ī                           ibus                                               Dative

am                  ās                                      um/um                           ō/a                                   em/-                    ēs/a                                              Accusative

ā                       īs                                      ō                                        īs                                       e                           ibus                                              Ablative

Fourth Declension                               Fifth Declension

us/u               ūs/ua                               ēs                                      ēs

ūs                    uum                                 ēī                                      ērum

uī                    ibus                                   ēī                                      ēbus

um/u             ūs/ua                               em                                    ēs

u                      ibus                                  ē                                        ēbus

This is coming back to me. When you read a Latin historical document the declension endings help clarify what case the noun is and there is something whether the word ends in -ar, -er, and -ir. First declension is only used with words that end in -ar. There are irregular verbs and probably nouns too. Later this week I plan to update and revise this and add some verb endings for the future, imperfect, and present. I had to find something to post as I am trying to write every week. This may not be the best, but is interesting and I have some plans and ideas for posts that are hopefully better or at least more relevant.