Latin/Basics Lesson 1
< Latin
Salvēte omnēs! (Hello everyone!)
If you are one of the many interested in learning the ancient and beautiful Latin language, here is a starter lesson for you.
Vocabulary
[edit | edit source]| English | Latin | Audio (Classical) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| girl | puella | ||
| woman | fēmina | ||
| boy | puer | ||
| man | vir | Either is acceptable; homō has a more universal usage (human) as opposed to vir (biologically male human) | |
| man | homō |
Phrases
[edit | edit source]| Latin | English | Audio (Classical) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| All phrases | |||
| ūnus puer | one boy | ||
| ūna fēmina | one woman | introducing the adjective unus,a,um to mean one, modifying a masculine or feminine noun | |
| illa puella | that girl, THE girl | Latin doesn't have article adjectives but may use demonstrative adjectives/pronouns for a similar purpose or to add emphasis -- do not worry too much about it until later, though | |
| ille homō | that man, the man | ||
| ille vir | that man |
Sentences
[edit | edit source]| Latin | English | Audio (Classical) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| All sentences | |||
| Sum fēmina | I am a woman I am the woman. |
||
| Ego fēmina sum. | I am a woman I am the woman. |
Introducing subject pronoun Ego = I and the flexible word order of Latin sentences. | |
| Vir sum | I am a man I am the man. |
||
| Ego sum puer Sum puer Puer sum. |
I am a boy. | ||
| Puella sum. | I am a girl. | ||
| Ille homō sum. | I am that human being I am that man. |
||
| Sum illa fēmina | I am that woman. | ||
| Sum ūna puella Ūna puella sum Ego ūna puella sum Ego sum ūna puella Ego sum puella ūna. |
I am one girl. |
Practice
[edit | edit source]| Practice and learn the words and phrases in this lesson | |
|---|---|
| Step one | First learn the words using this lesson: |
| Step two | Next try learning and writing the sentences using this: |
| Note that the Memrise stage covers the content for all the lessons in this section | |
As you can see if you made it this far, Latin has an incredibly flexible word order within sentences. It makes up for this flexibility with a very rigid and absolute requirement for the correct grammatical endings for nouns and verbs, as becomes very obvious within the first few days of study. This is precisely why it makes it easy to learn with online tools. Making Grammar-learning mistakes into a game automatically makes it fun and is a fantastic resource to add to any learning situation. You can try these sentences on Memrise.
Thanks for reading and... Habeātis bonam fortūnam!