Latin
From Wikiversity
Latin is an Indo-European language which was influenced by Ancient Greek and Etruscan, amongst others. Spoken in Ancient Rome, and closely related to a number of other ancient Italic languages such as Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan and Venetic, it eventually evolved into the Romance languages spoken today.
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[edit] Grammar
Latin grammar is the root of nearly all Romance languages. Many constructions in Romance languages remain virtually unchanged from their Latin counterparts. For instance, the ending of verbs determines the person (first, second, or third) and the number (singular or plural), and nouns and adjectives possess genders.
Originally the Latin language had seventeen (!) cases. The nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, locative, temporale and so on. Indo-European languages were originally very widely developed.
Usually, the basic word order is loosely based on "Subject Object Verb", similar to Spanish or even Japanese. However, this is not a universal rule. Unlike English, in which sentences derive much of their meaning from where the words are placed, Latin sentences can be scrambled in virtually any order and still make sense. The endings of the nouns and the verbs tell the word's function in a sentence. (See Nouns and verbs).
Verbs are conjugated but there are no such things as "helper verbs" as there are in English, only different endings for each tense/person/mood/etc.. (yes there are A LOT of endings). The essential endings are 1st person singular-o OR m 2nd person singular- s 3rd person singular- t 1st person plural- mus 2nd person plural- tis 3rd person plural - nt.
[edit] Nouns
The First Three Declensions:
| Case | FIRST DECLENSION: | SECOND DECLENSION: | THIRD DECLENSION: | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SINGULAR | PLURAL | SINGULAR | PLURAL | SINGULAR | PLURAL | |
| Nominative | a | ae | us | i | -- (typically -s) | es |
| Genitive | ae | arum | ī | orum | is | ium (or um) |
| Dative | ae | īs | ō | īs | ī | ibus |
| Accusative | am | ās | um | ōs | em | es |
| Ablative | ā | īs | ō | īs | e | ibus |
| Vocative | a | ae | e | ī | -- | es |
- Cases
- Latin nouns can change their endings according to cases, as listed in the chart above.
- A list of the cases and their basic functions.
- Nominative - used for subject or complement of a sentence, or when something is being named or created.
- "Cornelia est puella." (Cornelia is a girl.)
- Genitive - used for possession, description, or partitive.
- "felis Corneliae" (Cornelia's cat)
- "Cornelia est puella magnae sapientiae. (Cornelia is a girl of great wisdom.)
- "amphora plena vini (a vase full of wine)
- Dative - Indirect object/ used when "to" or "for" would be.
- Marcus cani pretium dat. (Marcus gave the dog a reward/Marcus gave a reward to the dog.)
- Accusative - primarily direct object. Some prepositions take the accusative but only when it is motion toward something.
- Felis piscem petit. (The cat looks for fish.)
- Cornelia ovum consumit. (Cornelia eats an egg)
- Ablative - Object of a preposition (any preposition that IS NOT motion towards).
- Vocative - Direct Address
- AND SOMETIMES Locative - used to show the location of something
- Nominative - used for subject or complement of a sentence, or when something is being named or created.
[edit] Practice
Vocabulary:
- puella, -ae, f. girl
- sub, prep. underneath, under
- arbor, -oris, f. a tree
- sedeo sedere sedi sessum, to sit
Example: Puella sub arbore sedet. The girl sits (or is sitting or does sit) under the tree.
[edit] Verbs
Latin verbs is quite like the verbs of other languages, such as Spanish. Each verb usually has 4 principle parts (a good amount of them only have 3). Latin verbs are formed on the basis of a root and an ending.
Lets start with an example: Amo, amare, amavi, amatus; To love
The first principle part, amo is the 1st person present active singular indicative form of the verb "to love". What this means is that you translate it as I love, or I am loving.
The second principle part is the present active infinitive. To translate, its just to be. The infinitive usually ends with are, ere, or ire. In our case of amo, the second principle part is amare, to love. The infinitive dictates the root used for many forms of the verb.
The third principle part is the 1st singular perfect active indicative. The perfect case is translated as a completed action. Our Amavi is translated as I have loved or I loved (be careful, there is a difference between had loved and have loved). The 3rd principle part shows the root for much of the perfect system.
The fourth principle part is the Perfect Passive Participle, abbreviated as the PPP. The PPP is a participle, in the past tense. Amatus would be translated as "having been loved" The perfect passive participle is very important for passives in Latin verbs.
Most of this stuff will be pretty confusing for now. The key idea is that Latin verbs have 4 principle parts, and what each principle part means
[edit] Irregular Verbs
Like in English, Latin has its irregular verbs: verbs that do not follow the set patterns or anything close.
Here's the most important one: To be: Sum, Esse, fui, futurus
This are the present forms of the verb
Singular: 1st person: sum 2nd person: es 3rd person: est
Plural 1st person: sumus 2nd person: estis 3rd person: sunt
[edit] Spelling
In the Latin Language there are spellings of words that may seem weird to english speakers, in some cases there are accents over vowels going both right and left. There are letters that contain tildes or ~, there are direreses or sideways colons
