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In my previous post on this topic, we discussed the general role of noun cases in reading Latin. Noun cases are the "job" the noun does in the sentence. In English, you know what job the noun is doing based on where the noun occurs in the sentence. In Latin, the noun's job is indicated by an inflected ending. Nouns have a separate inflected ending for each noun case. Latin nouns have five cases, which do (approximately) five basic jobs:
We learned these yesterday:
Nominative (subject)
Agricola facit = The farmer does it.
Accusative (direct object)
Agricolam complectitur = S/he embraces the farmer.
The remaining noun "jobs" are receiving, possessing, and being the instrument of an action:
Dative (the person who receives something, known in grammar
as an "indirect object")Agricolae dat = S/he gives it to the farmer.
Genitive (shows possession)
Agricolae agrum = the farmer's field (The dative and genitive ending for this noun are the same. This is not always the case.)
Ablative (shows the means by which something is done)
Ab agricolā bellum geritur = The war is waged by the farmer.
(The line over the -a indicates that you hold the sound for a longer time when pronouncing it. These are left out of many Latin texts and I will only use them when they are essential for the word's meaning or job.)
Next up: Some simple Latin sentences Pin It
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