LINGVALATINA - Lingua Latina - Latin Language

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

Latin is an "Italic language". This is just a fancy way to say that Latin was born on the Italian peninsula. It is the tongue of the Roman Empire and the language of the citizens of Rome. Before the settlement of Rome, the region it was founded in was inhabited by a tribe that called their corner of Italy "Latium". The language of the "Latins" was the immediate predecessor to archaic Latin; the earliest form that was mostly spoken and not written so much. The Latins go quite far back. As far as what they call the "Greek Bronze Age". That is to say, a time period in Greece when the most popular and advanced form of metalworking was bronze. This time period was around 1500 B.C., so you can see, that's quite a long time before the Roman Empire. With the founding of Rome in 753 B.C. (or so they say), another form of Latin arose next to archaic Latin: classical Latin. Though, we didn't call it that yet.
As time passed on, the civilization of Rome become more "civilized" and the Roman Republic (which was devised to govern the quickly growing population of Rome and Latium together) was eventually surplanted by the Roman Empire. It was during this time, right as the Republic started its downfall, that classical Latin boomed, right around 30 B.C. Classical Latin is, more or less, the language spoken by the educated people of Rome. One was often considered high class if that one was well educated. Despite this, the Romans didn't despise their archaic vernacular dialect; they did continue to call their language "Latina", after all, easily referencing the Latins and their influence.
With the massive and rather aggressive expansion of the Roman Empire, we reach the final stage of Latin after the classical period: vulgar Latin. With the empire being so massive and many of the resources beginning to thin out, the great Roman Empire began its decline around 400 A.D. As this happened, those countries that were overtaken by the Romans in their conquest stopped agreeing to speak the way they did so much. They started to speak their own way, which created this "vulgar" Latin, or the language of the common people. When the empire finally did fall in about 476 (the generally accepted date), the vulgar Latin of those countries started to become so different from each other, each culture starting to make their own way to say this here and that there that they created the early forms of the modern group of what we call "Romance languages". To put it simply, Romance languages are those languages that descended from the Romans, or Latin, primarily in those countries who where occupied by the Romans in the Empire. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and many more.
So, now that you've read all that, you can see that Latin was the major language of a very large area of Europe for around 1,200 years. Even after the decline and fall of the empire, it still remained an important language for some time afterward as well, not to mention it being the influential language of quite a large number of modern languages, including English. However, I will not try to make this part flowery and skirt around the truth. Latin, by itself, is pretty useless. As a dead language, you cannot really make any practical use of it completely on its own unless you want to study the classics. But, it works wonders if you think of Latin like it's algebra. Algebra is, by itself, useless. What you do with it is use it as a basis to learn higher math, such as calculus. If you learn calculus, you can really make a hugely profitable career out of it. There are hundreds upon hundreds of fields in which calculus and its many branches of math are supremely useful. In the case of Latin, it is obviously the precursor to all of those modern languages that I mentioned, and more. Just learning the basics of Latin will help make learning all those modern languages almost, I'm pretty sure, a bazillion times easier. Everyone will tell you this, but the effect is so much more unfathomably great when you experience it first-hand.
So! All that jabbering out of the way, let's get to business. In this class I'll be teaching classical Latin. I hope you'll join me in your conquest of learning the languages of the Mediterranean world by starting out with the father of them all, lingua Latina antiqua.

In this class, I will try to make things as simple as I can for you. I will have to forewarn you right now, Latin is among the most difficult languages to learn. It will become very difficult very quickly, but fear not! I will go slowly, and if you are stumped or have questions, by all means, please contact me. I love questions and no one is regarded as less intelligent for asking, so don't be afraid to do so.
That all said, this is my first time teaching a language in a way that's somewhat professional, and I'm going to try and be as comprehensive as possible. However, if things get a little bumpy, I apologize. I do appreciate constructive criticism; any kind of suggestion that I can do to facilitate the learning process will be greatly appreciated.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Family, origins, orthography

Latin, as mentioned earlier, is an Italic language. It has roots in both the tribe before Rome and ancient Greek. Spoken throughout the Roman Empire, it was spread through the entire Mediterranean world, and to this day, influences many modern languages spoken throughout Europe and Africa.
There are two major dialects of Latin: classical Latin and vulgar Latin. Classical Latin was the dialect of the educated people, particularly in Rome, while vulgar Latin is really an umbrella term that identifies a large group of different dialects of Latin that eventually evolved into the modern Romance languages.
The writing system of Latin used the Roman alphabet, as you would expect, with a few minor differences to the way it is used in English. The classical Latin alphabet consisted of the following:

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X

The Romans did not have lower-case letters during that time, so there are a few things you must take note of here.
- There was no U, and it was often represented by a V. Likewise, as a consonant, the Romans did not pronounce the V like an English /v/, but rather like a /w/. So a word like "egg (ovus)" was written "OVVS" and was pronounced "Oh-woos".
- The letter J was considered a fancier way to write I, and so was used in certain names that began with I to denote respect, such as the Roman god of power, Jupiter (JVPPITER) or the infamous Julius Caeser (JVLIVS CÆSAR). The J was pronounced like an I. However, in most Roman texts, you will still see IVLIVS or Iulius.
- Although not all present, the Romans only used K, X, Y and Z to write words of Greek origin, e.g. CRYSTALLVS, crystal.

With all that in mind, it may be obvious to you, or it may not, but the pronunciation I will be teaching is the reconstructed ancient Roman dialect, and not the pronunciation utilized by the Roman Catholic Church.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Pronunciation Guide

While this may not be as important, I still felt I should include it. To me, as a super-nerd, nothing is more exciting than saying something in Latin with a very distinct accent. So, with that in mind, I will teach you the reconstructed ancient Roman dialect. Keep in mind also that it is "reconstructed", in that linguists have only taken very educated guesses at how Latin was spoken by the Romans; none of this is set in stone, and there are, after all, no Romans around to laugh at you or correct your pronunciation. wink

The guide will be set up like so:
Letter in Latin - Long IPA pronunciation || Short IPA pronunciation (vowels only) - English approximation of the long sound || Short sound (vowels only)

.::Vowels::.

A - /ɑː/ || /ə/ - as in "father" || as in "about"
E - /eɪ/ || /ɛ/ - 'a' as in "face" or "date" || as in "pet"
I - /iː/ || /ɪ/ - 'ee' as in "feet" || as in "pit"
O - /ɔː/ || /ɔ/ - as in "toe" || an exception, sounds like British English "not" (think long O but not so long)
V - /uː/ || /ʊ/ - as in "you" || as in "put"
Y - /yː/ || /ʏ/ - another exception. Pucker a bit like you're going to whistle, curl your tongue up right behind your teeth and vocalize it. It should sound like a different sort of "ooh" sound. || as in "book"

The thing to take note of in the case of Latin Y is that it's the Roman approximation of the Greek letter upsilon (Υυ), which was pronounced roughly like this. Less strictly, the Latin Y sounds more like the Latin I. So in the strict Roman dialect, "crystallus" sounds like "crü-stal-loos" but in a lesser strictly speaking world, it would sound like "cree-stal-loos". Obviously, if you are only going through the first half of the class, it is not important to master this pronunciation; take it how you want.

.: biggrin iphthongs::.

A diphthong is simply a pair of vowels that are pronounced together as one vowel. The set-up remains the same.

Æ - /aɪ/ - as in "aisle"
AV - /aʊ/ - as in "how"
Œ - /ɔɪ/ - as in "toy"
EI - /eɪ/ - as in "hey"
EV - /ɛʊ/ - roughly as in "feud" without the 'fy' sound at the beginning
VI - /wɪ/ - as in "gooey"

NOTE! In some texts or modern transliterations, the æ diphthong is often written as 'ae', which is obvious. In some of them, however, the -a- is completely left off and æ will be written as just e. Watch out for that.

* A special vowel combination:

II - /ɪiː/
There is no real English word that utilizes this pronunciation. All I can say is that the first I is short and the second is long, so it will sound roughly like "ih-yee", but a little more 'run-together', as diphthongs go. This construction mostly shows up in certain forms of the genitive case, where the word will end with it, e.g. SOMNII, "sohm-nihyee" (of a dream).
Don't worry about not knowing what the "genitive case" is yet; I'll clear that up in the next lesson.

.::Consonants::.

B - /b/ - as in "butter"
C - /k'/ - as in "cat" but sometimes with a sort of slight breathing sound with it, like you're trying to say "k-hat".
D - /d/ - as in "do"
F - /f/ - as in "font"
G - /g/ - as in "go"
H - /h/ - as in "hat" (H is never silent)
K - /k'/ - same as C
L - /l/ - as in "lot"
M - /m/ - as in "man"
N - /n/ - as in "not"
P - /p/ - as in "point"
Q - /kw/ - exclusively in the construction of "qu", therefore always pronounced like the English word "queen" and the 'u' sound is never left out like Spanish or French "que".
R - /ɾ/ - a tapped or trilled r sound, such as Spanish or Italian "caro" (from Latin "carus"!), and is always completely pronounced, never absorbed into the vowel sound as occurs in British English.
S - /s/ - always as in "see" and never as in "rose"
T - /t/ - as in "ten"
V - /w/ - as in "win"
X - /ks/ - as in "six"

.::Consonant Compounds::.

Most of these compounds have special pronunciations that refer to the Roman approximations of certain Greek letters.

CH - /kʰ/ - represents the Greek letter chi (Χχ) and is pronounced like the "khat" sound I mentioned earlier, but the breathing sound much more prominent.
PH - /φ/ - from the Greek letter phi (Φφ) and sounds like a p followed by heavy aspiration, similar to 'khat'.
TH - /θ/ - represents the Greek letter theta (Θθ) and is pronounced like a t followed by heavy aspiration, also similar to 'khat'.
NG/GN - /ŋg/ or /ŋ/ - comes from the Greek combination of two gammas, (γγ), in which the first gamma sounds like the n in "ring" and the second is pronounced like the g in "finger". In the case of NG, it is pronounced like "finger". An example of this is the Greek αγγελος "messenger" (pronounced "ahng-geh-lohsh" [yes, enjoy my terrible transliteration of Hellenistic Greek phonology]) to Latin => ANGELVS "angel; messenger", pronounced as "ahng-geh-lus". In the case of GN, it is pronounced like the ngn in "hangnail". PVGNARE is pronounced "poong-nah-reh"; there is no hard 'g' sound.
RH - /ɾ/ - from either a beginning rho (ῥ) or a particular Greek combination of two rhos (ῤῥ) in which there is an obvious aspirating noise following the trill of the r, which many a Roman could not pronounce well. Therefore, when RH is present, it is not normally pronounced any differently from a regular R.

And with that, you have the pronounciation guide for the reconstructed Roman dialect. Now, on to the grammar!  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Lesson 1 - Nouns: The technical stuff first

We'll have to start with basic nouns, and even though it seems like a little, we actually have a lot to cover, so here we go!
A noun in English in its most basic sense is simply a word that identifies a person, place or thing. The word "noun" is ultimately derived from the Latin word "nomen", which actually means "name"; in essence, that is what a noun does, doesn't it? It 'names' a person, place or thing.
So, what about them? In Latin, there is this somewhat complicated idea called "declension". At first, this may seem confusing, but try to bear with me. Latin is what they call a "fusional language", which means that we attach affixes to the base form of a word to express different meanings. That's really just a fancy-shmancy way to express this idea: (base of the word that doesn't change)(ending here that does change). Word - ending 1. Word - ending 2. Ending 1 will mean, let's say, subject. Ending 2 will mean object. That's all it is. Depending on the way a word ends and its gender will sort of determine in what way the endings are affected. With that in mind, there are groups of nouns in Latin that have the same or similar endings and/or will conjugate similar to each other. These groups of similarly conjugating nouns are called "declensions".
There are five declensions of nouns, but I often forgo the technical terms for color-coding them. It makes it a little easier, I think, so we'll try it out and see how it goes.

The next thing we need to cover is the idea of Latin "cases". Cases merely identify the grammatical function of the noun in the sentence. Take the English sentence "I gave the charter to the lady." Of the three nouns present in this sentence, we realize that the subject is "I", the direct object is the "charter" and the indirect object is the "lady". This is mostly given due to the word order. English word order generally goes subject-verb-object. Most of the time, these words do not change, no matter what function they perform. If you altered the sentence a bit and said "the lady gave the charter to me", the only word that changes is "I => me". You can consider that Latin cases function like "I/me/my" does in that there is a subject, object and possessive form, but for every noun. So "lady" would change its form from the first sentence to the second because it changes from being the indirect object to the subject in Latin. I hope this is making sense.
With all that jibber-jabber out of the way, we'll learn the cases of Latin. There are six, (and a seventh, almost obsolete case), and they are as follows:

I - Nominative case - This case identifies the word as the subject of the sentence. Easy.
II - Vocative case - You utilize this case when you are directly addressing someone. "Oh Jupiter!"
III - Accusative case - Identifies the direct object of the verb. "I gave the charter to the lady."
IV - Genitive case - Shows possession. "Therefore, it's the lady's charter."
V - Dative case - More or less functions like the indirect object in English. "I gave the charter to the lady."
VI - Ablative case - Illustrates the "agent" of the verb; by what means the verb is being completed. "I'll get home by bus." "You eat with a fork."
VII - Locative case - Shows where or at what location. Largely obsolete, mostly only used in city or regional names. "To Athens!" "I live in Rome."

There is no particular order to the cases. I will, however, in shorthand tend to write just a Roman numeral for each case as they appear here. I will try to ease you into it and give you abbreviations for each case along with the number I use so you'll (hopefully) get used to it before I just use the numerals. So what you must realize here is that every declension or color of nouns will have the ability to conjugate every word in them into each of these cases (save for VII LOC). The difference between each color will be gender (in which case Latin has three: masculine, feminine and neuter) and also how they conjugate. Memorizing these cases and their function is crucial.

Next is the lack of articles in Latin. There are no definite or indefinite articles; REGINA can be "a queen", "the queen" or just "queen".

The final thing I will touch on briefly is Latin word order. While the use of these cases will allow some flexibility with how you order the words, it is generally considered a sort of structure in which newer information comes first and the verb follows it. "I gave the charter" will generally become "the charter I gave". Don't worry too much about if this confuses you right now; as we look at some real Latin, it will sort of start to grow on you. Just keep in mind this basic structure, and you'll be alright.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Nouns: Blue Nouns (finally!)

Now that we've learned all that technical stuff about how nouns work, it's time to learn nouns of the first declension, or blue nouns, as I call them. So-called because they are easy to decline and easy to recognize in most cases.

The first and simplest method of identifying blue nouns is their ending in the nominative, which is always -A. These nouns are all feminine save for about five exceptions. I will color-code it like this:

TERRA - nf. Earth

The stem is blue, identifying it as a blue noun, and the ending is pink, showing that it's feminine.

RED means the noun is masculine.
PINK means the noun is feminine.
GREY means the noun is neuter.

Nouns in Latin have two numbers: singular and plural. Just for the sake of knowing, in archaic times, there was what they called "dual" nouns, or nouns that identified two objects simultaneously, which came from ancient Greek. Lucky for us, the Romans did away with that, so we only have to worry about singular and plural. I will give a chart for conjugating all nouns in each of the six cases that will look like this:

Singular | Plural
I NOM S | I NOM P
II VOC S | II VOC P
III ACC S | III ACC P
IV GEN S | IV GEN P
V DAT S | V DAT P
VI ABL S | VI ABL P
(VII LOC S | VII LOC P)

I will only illustrate VII LOC in cases where it is different or unique. Ninety percent of the time, the locative case is the same as the dative.
Finally, conjugating a single noun through these six cases is a process called "declining" the noun. So with all that out of the way, let's decline blue nouns.

TERRA - nf. Earth
I. TERRA | TERRÆ
II. TERRA | TERRÆ
III. TERRAM | TERRAS
IV. TERRÆ | TERRARVM
V. TERRÆ | TERRIS
VI. TERRA | TERRIS

This might look like a lot to memorize, but don't worry! Notice that some of them are the same: as you get used to this, you will start to see how things work. As we learn more colors, you will also start to see a lot of patterns. This is key. Don't try to absorb every single word form individually, but instead, look for those patterns. The first that I will point out early on is that IV GEN plural will almost always have -RVM. Sometimes, the A becomes an O, so it may be -ORVM instead of -ARVM, but it will have -RVM almost in every case.

As I mentioned earlier, the word ending is crucial; it will be the part that tells you how the word is functioning.

- Particularities -
As I mentioned before, not every blue noun is feminine. Some of them are masculine, but they are a select few.
AGRICOLA nm. Farmer
This is one example. It may not appear very important now, but the gender of a noun is actually very important. If you are unsure, I will give you a good dictionary to use in the future, so be patient.

Another thing I must point out is there are a few blue nouns that have irregular dative and ablative endings. Don't worry! Just a few. They are:
ANIMA nf. Soul; spirit
DEA nf. Goddess
FILIA nf. Daughter
LIBERTA nf. Freedwoman
Here is a chart declining them, with the irregularities bolded:

ANIMA - nf. Earth
I. ANIMA | ANIMÆ
II. ANIMA | ANIMÆ
III. ANIMAM | ANIMAS
IV. ANIMÆ | ANIMARVM
V. ANIMÆ | ANIMABVS
VI. ANIMA | ANIMABVS

The other three words I mentioned conjugate exactly like ANIMA. So the dative or ablative plural for daughter is FILIABVS, and the same goes for LIBERTABVS and DEABVS. The reasoning for this is so that these words are distinguished from their masculine counterparts, ANIMVS, FILIVS, LIBERTVS and DEVS, each being of another noun color but their dative and ablative plurals look like ANIMIS, FILIIS, LIBERTIS and DEIS. As you can see, if we conjugated the blue nouns the regular way, they would be identical to the masculine forms, so we now have a way to distinguish them.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Verbs: Blue Verbs

On to verbs. The fundamental expressive power of any idea requires the use of a verb. A verb is, as we all know, a word that describes an action. The English verb is quite different from the Latin one, however. In what way will come in good time.
As the nouns, verbs also have groups in which the verbs all conjugate similarly. These groups are called "conjugations". They are numbered, just as the noun declensions are, and just as the nouns, I color-code them. The first conjugation of verbs are blue for the same reason blue nouns are so-called; blue verbs are easy to conjugate and easy to identify.

Now, the first thing I must cover is what an infinitive is. If you don't know, the infinitive is the most basic form of the verb, usually expressed in English as "to ______". To jump, to run, to hide, to love, to have, to come, to see, etc. The infinitive form of any regular Latin verb will usually end with -RE. We'll get into the verbs that don't end this way later. The color of the verb will determine the vowel that comes before this -RE. For blue verbs, the vowel that follows is -A-, and thus, the infinitive blue verb always ends with -ARE.

The next thing to discuss is the way the Latin verb works in tandem with the subject. In English, we have to include the subject because, without it, we might become confused as to who we are talking about. I go, you go, he goes, we go, they go. Notice how the verb barely changes? Well, in Latin, for each subject, the verb will conjugate differently to identify it. While that may lead to a lot of memories, fear not! There are patterns, as I mentioned earlier. Don't let it scare you away.
With that in mind, there is something very important to take note of. Because of the Latin verb's ability to denote the person inside its ending, you *do not* need to include the subject itself; it will seem redundant. Using the subject itself along with the verb will induce a sort of special emphasis, which we will cover a bit later.
So the verbs will be arranged like this:

First person form, infinitive form, first person past tense form, participle form (will be covered later) - English translation.
So the first blue verb we'll learn is AMARE, to love. It will look like this.

AMO, AMARE, AMAVI, AMATVS - to love

The only parts you need to really take note of right now are the first two, the -O part and the -ARE part. They mean "I _____" and "to ______" respectively. For the sake of simplicity, we'll continue to use "love" in this example. So now, we conjugate the person and number! If you know anything about verbs in any other Romance language, you will be very familiar with this concept. The person and number format will look like this:

S <=> P
1. I love | We love
2. You love | You all love
3. He/She/It loves | They love

Now, in order to conjugate a blue verb, you remove the -(A)RE and you add the appropriate ending. So, let's conjugate!

1. AMO | AMAMVS
2. AMAS | AMATIS
3. AMAT | AMANT

So, as you can see, all these forms are different from each other and easily distinguished from each other in normal speech. AMO is "I love", and because of this, you do not need to literally use EGO (I) and say "EGO AMO". That's just weird. Another thing to take note of, these are present tense. AMO can be "I love", "I do love", "I am loving", or any other expression of the present tense in that way.
With this in mind, you can conjugate any blue verb like this. Here's another:

DO, DARE, DEDI, DATVS - to give

You can say "I give" by writing "DO". You can say "they give" by saying "DANT". You all give? DATIS? There's something to be learned here. Remember case V? The dative case? I wonder where the name for this case came from. ;3

That will conclude blue verbs for now. Onward to our first sentences! Exciting, no?  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - First sentences, Latin dictionary and principle parts!

Now, finally, we can make simple sentences in Latin. Remember that one I kept using over and over? "I gave the charter to the lady"? Well, in present tense, we can write this in Latin! The vocabulary is as follows:

DOMINA nf. Lady
CARTA nf. Paper; record; charter
DO, DARE, DEDI, DATVS - to give

Remember your cases and the word order lesson! We want to say the new information first, and then the verb. "To the lady the charter I give", or, if we knew there was a lady and didn't know about the charter, we will say "the charter to the lady I give". Let's write it!

DOMINÆ CARTAM DO.
-Or-
CARTAM DOMINÆ DO.

See how the word ending shows you the grammatical function and the pronoun and everything? You can see that DOMINA is V DAT and CARTA is III ACC so we know that they are the indirect and direct objects respectively without regard to what order they go in, and we know that the verb is first person singular because of its ending in -O. Amazing! Let's do another!

New vocabulary:
ECCLESIA nf. Church

DOMINA TERRAM ECCLESIÆ DAT.

Can you tell what the meaning is here? I'll give a little space for you to figure it out before I give away the answer.

...

...

...

DOMINA is case I.

...

...

...

TERRA is III.

...

...

...

ECCLESIA is V.

...

...

...

DARE is third person singular.

...

...

...

Figured it out? "The lady gives land to the church." Easy, huh? Maybe you didn't remember every single word ending, but that's alright; that will come with time and practice. For now, let these examples help you start to understand the way Latin works.

Now, for your dictionary. One of my favorite dictionaries is located here:

http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/whitakerwords.html

You may choose to download it, or you may simply use the online version. Both are great and work just about the same. I will explain the dictionary code for nouns and verbs, since that is what we have learned so far.

When you input a noun such as "terra" for example, you will get something that looks like this:

terr.a N 1 1 NOM S F
terr.a N 1 1 VOC S F
terr.a N 1 1 ABL S F

terra, terrae N (1st) F [XXXAX]
earth, land, ground; country, region;

The first three entries that show "terr.a" illustrate the stem. The period marks where it ends and after it is what will change. The first N means it's a noun. "1 1" means first declension (blue noun) and it is variant 1. Don't worry about the second number for now. NOM/VOC/ABL identifies what case that particular form is. S means singular and F is feminine.
On the next line are the two principle parts of the Latin noun, I NOM and IV GEN. The genitive case is always given with the nominative because it will help you to identify what color the noun is. I will proceed to give new vocabulary in this fashion. N is, again, Noun. (1st) is first declension again, or a blue noun. F is feminine, once more. The [XXXAX] you can ignore for now as well.
This dictionary will also identify conjugated nouns. If you put in "terras", your entry will look like this:

terr.as N 1 1 ACC P F
terra, terrae N (1st) F [XXXAX]
earth, land, ground; country, region;

Same story as last time, but the P replacing S from the last entry means that it's Plural.

In the case of putting in a verb, such as "do", you will get this:

d.o V 1 1 PRES ACTIVE IND 1 S
I ~
do, dare, dedi, datus V (1st) TRANS [XXXAO]
give; dedicate; sell; pay; grant/bestow/impart etc.

Like with nouns, "d.o" identifies the verb stem. V means Verb. 1 1 means the same as for nouns; first conjugation (blue verb) and variant 1. PRESent ACTIVE INDicative after that. Don't worry about not knowing what all of those mean yet. They will be covered soon as well. The 1 after those three codes means what person it is. First person, or "I ______", which is what the next line points out with "I ~".
Now the four principle parts of the Latin verb. Do is "I give". Dare is "to give", dedi is "I gave" and datus is the participle, to be covered later. V for Verb, TRANSitive, which will also be taught later, and [XXXAO] which you can just ignore. These four parts are always given in most dictionaries to ease their identification, and therefore I will give new verbs in this fashion. Like with nouns, you can input a conjugated verb and the dictionary will tell you what form it is and always give those four principle parts, so give it a shot!

So there you have your new dictionary. See if you can find some other blue nouns and verbs and put them together into new sentences!  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Verbs and noun cases: some excruciating detail

This lesson's a big one, so prepare yourself. Don't worry about trying to memorize this all the first time! There are no time constraints on how fast you learn; take your time, read each section as many times as you need to until you've got a pretty good grasp, and then move to the next section. As always, if you've got any questions, please post them in the pupils' thread; I am more than happy to help!

First, we will have to learn two pretty in-depth verb concepts. Put your hard hats on; this lesson may get a little rough.
The first thing to cover is the idea that Latin verbs have what they call "voices". The voice of a verb can be only in two variations: active and passive. The active voice is what we have dealt with so far. It means that the action of the verb is done with help, or that there is a hand in the action. Passive voice is the other side of that coin in which the action happens of its own accord, and that no one aided in the action occurring. In English, there are some verbs that are inherently passive, such as "falling" vs "dropping". If someone drops a ball, they had to kind of do that themselves, accident or not. If the ball fell off of something, it just fell. See the difference? In English, there are other cases where an active verb can be made passive by utilizing the auxiliary verb "to be" with it. "I call" (active) will become "I am called" (passive), for example, to make the verb "call" passive. Latin will have a separate verb form that we will learn later. What I really want to get at here is the ultimate passive verb, "to be". It will be important later, and we'll learn it in future lessons.
The second idea is that there are transitive and intransitive verbs. This idea is largely the same as the active and passive voices; a transitive verb would be "drop" and "fall" would be intransitive. The key difference is that if a verb is already intransitive, then it will not change its form to indicate that, as opposed to an passive verb having a different form, which we will also learn in due time. Passive vs intransitive is like "I am called" vs "I fall". See how we have to throw in an extra word to make the first passive, but the second doesn't change at all? This is how it will work in Latin.

I gave the basic usage of the six cases previously, and this lesson is going to explain their function in a bit greater detail. Some are still quite simple and won't require much explanation, but I know that one or two sentence description of a few was not enough. Therefore I will try my best to explain it in ways that will help you understand them better.

I NOMINATIVVS

The first is the nominative. The simple idea of the nominative case is that it identifies the subject of the sentence. The nominative case is overridden if the word itself is both the subject and another part of speech. If the sentence is "cookies jumped from the oven onto my plate", the word "cookies" would be your subject, but it's also the direct object of what jumped. In this case, you would put "cookies" as III ACC and not as I NOM.
The next important aspect of the nominative is that, as opposed to what I just mentioned, if you utilize a direct object with a passive verb, such as "to be", you *do not* conjugate the object as III ACC, but it becomes I NOM. "I am a man." The word "man" here is I NOM, not III ACC. Passive verbs do not take a direct object; the object must become nominative. This will come up most often with "to be", but you must use I NOM with *any* passive verb. If you say "cookies were given at the banquet", in this case "cookies" is accompanied by the passive expression "were given", complete with "to be" in the past tense and "given", therefore you would put it as I NOM.
This concept also applies to intransitive verbs. If you put "celo" into your dictionary, you will see:

cel.o V 1 1 PRES ACTIVE IND 1 S
I ~
celo, celare, celavi, celatus V (1st) TRANS [XXXAO]
conceal, hide, keep secret; disguise; keep in dark/in ignorance; shield;

The TRANS is short for "transitive". If you hide something, whatever you hid must be III ACC. Putting in an intransitive verb (ambulo) will look like this:

ambul.o V 1 1 PRES ACTIVE IND 1 S
I ~
ambulo, ambulare, ambulavi, ambulatus V (1st) INTRANS [XXXBO]
walk, take a walk, go on foot; travel, march; go about, gad; parade, strut;

While the idea that this verb might be hard to visualize as intransitive, the word in Latin is used as an intransitive verb and therefore its object, whoever goes on a walk, must be I NOM. On a final note, if the entry says neither TRANS or INTRANS, then treat the verb as active and give its object as III ACC.

II VOCATIVVS

The second is the vocative. With II VOC, you are directly addressing someone or something. II VOC can also be used to express lament or other extreme emotion. "Oh Jupiter! Why is life so hard?" "Bring me the wine, slave!" Usually II VOC looks like or is identical to I NOM or some other case, which is why you often see "Oh!" before it. In the case that II VOC is easily identifiable from other cases, it has a tendency to override other cases when that kind of emphasis is desired. Otherwise, there isn't much else to it.

III ACCVSATIVVS

The third, the accusative, marks your direct object. As mentioned before, it will override the nominative. There is only one other function of III ACC that I feel I should point out right now for you beginners, and that is that III ACC is used to express duration of time. In expressions like "for five minutes", the word "minutes" would be III ACC. Make sure that you use the plural, since there are five of them! "It took thirty years." "I waited for ten minutes." And the like.

IV GENITIVVS

The fourth, everyone's favorite, the genitive. While seemingly simple, IV GEN has quite a number of functions. In its most basic sense, IV GEN expresses possession. When you see words like "the farmer's land", that is the same idea. However, we can flip it around and say "the land of the farmer" to express the same thing, right? This is how the thought would be expressed in Latin: TERRA AGRICOLÆ. When you see or think ('s) in English, try to replace that with (of) to express it; this will make it easier to put it in the Latin sense. "His book" => "book of him". "Teacher's apple" => "apple of teacher". To put it basically right now, in almost every case where you would use "of" in English is where you would make the connected word IV GEN in Latin.
"All of us."
"The city of Rome."
"The arrival of the guests."
"The servants' loyalty." (Or: "The loyalty of the servants.")
"The war of 1812." (Not a very era-appropriate example, but it works.)
"A boy of ten years."
So you can see, anytime you see "of", make it IV GEN. Anytime you can change the sentence a bit to put "of" in there to express the same idea, make it IV GEN. Naturally, these ideas can become much more complicated, but for now, just let it stay simple and use IV GEN for "of".

V DATIVVS

The fifth, the dative case. V DAT is used primarily to point out the indirect object. The secondary function is that there are several verbs with which their accompanying nouns must be V DAT. The first and most obvious so far is the verb DARE, to give. You must give things to people, so those people must be V DAT. There are a number of other verbs that are not so obvious. The first I will point out is:
IMPERO, IMPERARE, IMPERAVI, IMPERATVS to command. If you put "impero" into your dictionary, you will see this:

imper.o V 1 1 PRES ACTIVE IND 1 S
I ~
impero, imperare, imperavi, imperatus V (1st) [XXXAX]
order, command, levy; rule (over) (w/DAT);

See that? "(w/DAT)" tells you right there all you need to know. So whatever you rule over must be V DAT and not III ACC as one might think. I should point out that this only concerns the definition after the first semicolon, i.e. if you are trying to "rule over" something. Everything in the first half must be III ACC. In other words, if you want to say something like "I command you!" then "you" must be III ACC. If you are trying to say "I will rule the world!" then "world" must be V DAT. Watch out for that! As always, if you are unsure, it is always a good idea to double and triple check with the dictionary.

VI ABLATIVVS

The sixth and probably the most difficult to understand, the ablative. VI ABL essentially identifies the instrument of the verb, or by what means the verb is being done. As I mentioned briefly, you use it to express how you're doing it, even if lining up this train of thought is vague. For example, you're learning Latin in my class, right? So my class is the instrument of your learning; you are using it to learn. How are you learning? With my class. In that case, "my class" would be VI ABL in that expression. "My teacher warned me of the particularities of the ablative case." How exactly were you warned? By your teacher, right? "My teacher" should be VI ABL here too.
The other function of VI ABL that I want to point out for now is basically where you see the word "with" or "from" crop up, even if the word accompanying it doesn't quite feel like an instrument. "I travelled from America." "With Caesar as consul..." "Go with great speed." "Handle with care."
The last thing is that, while using III ACC with time indicated a duration, using VI with time indicates a static, non-moving expression of time. "It will be complete in thirty years." "I'll be there in ten minutes." "I wasn't aware of that at that time."
Remember! Make sure that, in the case of the first two sentences, you use the plural ablative of those nouns when we get to learning them, as there is more than one year and more than one minute. This is a mistake that I would often fall into when I was beginning my Latin conquest, and I would be the one saying silly things like "I was only gone for five minute!" ;P

VII LOCATIVVS

The final case, the locative. This case largely became the dative or ablative case and is mostly obsolete. By the time classical Latin arose, it was mostly only used for cities and islands in the Mediterranean. There are a select few nouns that are not city or island names that have a special locative case, and as mentioned, I will point them out as we learn them.
The basic and only real function of the locative case is to express "at what location". "I live in Rome." "I was born on Crete." (Crete is an island in the Mediterranean, if you didn't already know that, which explains 'on' instead of 'in'. The VII LOC is still used here.) If you are going to use Latin to mention cities outside the Roman empire, you use V DAT or VI ABL to describe to or from that city, even if you can, in a way, make a VII LOC case out of it; it's limited to just those places in and near Rome and the islands of the Mediterranean.

That wraps up this lesson. Wipe the sweat from your brows, go take a break if you need to, let this information soak in, and come back refreshed for the next one. We'll be learning the next colors of nouns and verbs, the greens, and they're not quite as easy as the blues, so be prepared.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Green Nouns

Now that we've learned the easy nouns and verbs, we'll move on to the greens, which are slightly more difficult. Slight variations in their endings make for a lot more to memorize, but don't worry; don't forget the patterns.
Most green nouns are masculine, with a few neuter nouns mixed in and a very minute number of feminines. However, this time around, the neuter nouns will distinguish themselves from the masculines with a particular ending, as opposed to the blues all having the same ending. I fear that this may be the lesson that would scare you away, as there are quite a number of variations to green nouns, but try to bear with me. There is no need to memorize it all overnight; you can take as long as you need to and you can come back to this lesson again and again and again, if need be.

So, let's learn our first group of green nouns, which are masculine and end with -VS. Remember those four blue nouns with special V and VI plural endings? ANIMA, DEA, FILIA and LIBERTA? Remember that I said they had masculine counterparts? It just so happens that they are all green masculine nouns: ANIMVS, DEVS, FILIVS and LIBERTVS. I will formally define them for you here:

ANIMVS, ANIMI m. Mind
DEVS, DEI m. God
FILIVS, FILII m. Son
LIBERTVS, LIBERTI m. Freedman

Without further ado, let's decline ANIMVS.

I. ANIMVS | ANIMI
II. ANIME | ANIMI
III. ANIMVM | ANIMOS
IV. ANIMI | ANIMORVM
V. ANIMO | ANIMIS
VI. ANIMO | ANIMIS

Remember before I told you that pattern involving IV in the plural? There it is. Another one to take note of: III usually ends with -m in the singular and -s in the plural.

Keep your hard hats on, we've got more to cover. The next group of green nouns are only slightly different: masculines that end with -IVS instead of just -VS.

GLADIVS, GLADII m. Sword

I. GLADIVS | GLADII
II. GLADI | GLADII
III. GLADIVM | GLADIOS
IV. GLADII | GLADIORVM
V. GLADIO | GLADIIS
VI. GLADIO | GLADIIS

Nothing to be too scared of here: it's the same table as ANIMVS, but with an extra -I- in the stem.

Another group, yes. These nouns are called "strong" nouns, and they can end in either -ER or -IR. They are so-called because they keep their vowels in the terminating syllable and you add on endings to that, so technically the stem is the entire nominative word.

VESPER, VESPERI m. Evening

I. VESPER | VESPERI
II. VESPER | VESPERI
III. VESPERVM | VESPEROS
IV. VESPERI | VESPERORVM
V. VESPERO | VESPERIS
VI. VESPERO | VESPERIS

Now, if you look carefully, you'll see that there is still nothing to fear. Save for I and II, this chart is also almost the same as ANIMVS. You merely add onto VESPER- instead of removing the end of the word. The ending vowels are all the same.

Naturally, if there are strong nouns, there must be weak ones. The weak green nouns always end with -er and are called weak because their -e- drops out when you decline it.

AGER, AGRI m. Field

Something important to take note of, the stem of this weak green noun is actually AGR-, but it's hard to say just "AGR" like that. Therefore, the -E- in I and II is only there to facilitate pronunciation. Now let's decline!

I. AGER | AGRI
II. AGER | AGRI
III. AGRVM | AGROS
IV. AGRI | AGRORVM
V. AGRO | AGRIS
VI. AGRO | AGRIS

And, wouldn't you know it, the endings for weak green nouns are also the same as ANIMVS, just with the altered stem. Keep an eye out for those words in the dictionary! This is only one reason why it's so important to give both I and IV in dictionaries. This way, you'll see "VESPER, VESPERI (2nd)" and you'll know it's green and strong; you add onto the whole word, as opposed to "AGER, AGRI (2nd)". You know that if you're farming in a field in the evening, you'll say "in a field (AGRO) in the evening (VESPERO)" and you won't say something silly, like "AGERO" or "VESPRO".

Now, this is where things start to change a little; we're going to cover the neuter green nouns. Neuter greens end with -(I)VM instead of -(I)VS and their endings actually vary just a bit. So look carefully:

QVADRATVM, QVADRATI n. Square

I. QVADRATVM | QVADRATA
II. QVADRATVM | QVADRATA
III. QVADRATVM | QVADRATA
IV. QVADRATI | QVADRATORVM
V. QVADRATO | QVADRATIS
VI. QVADRATO | QVADRATIS

Concurring with the pattern, the -IVM greens have the same endings as the -VM greens, but with that extra -I- in them. Let us decline further.

ADVERBIVM, ADVERBII n. Adverb

I. ADVERBIVM | ADVERBIA
II. ADVERBIVM | ADVERBIA
III. ADVERBIVM | ADVERBIA
IV. ADVERBII | ADVERBIORVM
V. ADVERBIO | ADVERBIIS
VI. ADVERBIO | ADVERBIIS

See? It isn't so bad. Next is green verbs, and, like the nouns, they're a little harder than the blues. Once we're through that, you'll have some experience with slightly more complex Latin ideas, so you'll be better prepared for the following lessons.

Now, as I mentioned, a few words have a special locative case. There are two green nouns that have such a case.

HVMVS, HVMI f. Ground
FOCVS, FOCI m. Hearth; household; family

These two words, instead of using V or VI, have their special VII forms of HVMI (on the ground) and FOCI (at the hearth). Keep these in mind.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Green Verbs

The Latin green verb ends with -ERE. So, like the blue verbs, the greens' stem is everything before the -ERE. However, in the present tense conjugations that we will soon be learning, the first emphasized -E- remains, which is different from the blues in that, with the blues, we completely removed -ARE. The only person this really shows up in is the first person. So, without further confusing lecturing, let us conjugate.

HABEO, HABERE, HABVI, HABITVS - to have

1. HABEO | HABEMVS
2. HABES | HABETIS
3. HABET | HABENT

Now, as you can see, the verb endings are identical to the blues' endings. The only part that's different is the vowel between the stem and the conjugated part (called the "thematic vowel") is -E- instead of -A-. Make sure that, if you are looking for a green verb in your dictionary, you find that (2nd). I'm sure it will confuse you, but if it ends with -ERE and you see (3rd) instead, it's a different verb color! Here's the kicker: Yellow verbs (which will come in a later lesson) also end with -ERE. Oh no! Just make sure you look for that (2nd). Now, some more verbs:

ARDEO, ARDERE, ARSI, ARSVS - to burn
DEBEO, DEBERE, DEBVI, DEBITVS - to owe
TENEO, TENERE, TENVI, TENTVS - to hold; possess

Let's walk down the paths of a few derivatives. Here's a green noun for you:

SOMNIVM, SOMNII n. Dream

From this noun, we can derive a verb:.

SOMNIO, SOMNIARE, SOMNIAVI, SOMNIATVS - to dream; to dream of or see in a dream

Speaking of blue verbs, remember your first lessons and vocabulary? Let's give a few examples.

CARTAS HABEO. REGINÆ CARTAM DO. ECCLESIÆ PECVNIAM DEBET.

New vocabulary:

PECVNIA, PECVNIÆ f. Money; property

"I have the charters. I give a charter to the lady. (She) owes money/property to the church."
Keep in mind that there are no articles (a, an or the) in Latin, and that DEBET is third person, denoting that "he", "she", or "it" performs the verb. In the context of who I just gave a charter to, we can safely assume that the lady owes the money.
Really basic sentences, but now we've seen a few greens in action too. With that said, I think that just about wraps up green verbs in the present tense. This was a pretty simple lesson; not much to say other than the minor differences between blue and green verbs. Next we'll learn a bit about a few pronouns and when to use them.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Pronouns part one! Personal and demonstrative

We have a whole mess of different varieties of pronouns to go over in these next few lessons: Personal pronouns, demonstrative, emphatic, relative, interrogative and indefinite. That sounds like a lot, but don't worry! We'll go over them a little at a time.

The first type is personal. These are pronouns that take the place of proper or common nouns, such as "I", "you", "he", "she" or "it". In Latin, naturally, these decline according to number and case. That said, they must match the noun that they are substituting if you decide to use one.
Before we decline them, let's talk about their purpose. I mentioned before that, in the case of using a verb, the pronoun itself is often not required; using the pronoun anyway will create a sort of special emphasis. For example, if you are accusing someone of a crime, instead of saying "he did it!" you can emphasize that it was him by using the pronoun with it. It would come off as something along the lines of "he is the one who did it!" as opposed to just "he did it". What if you have a name that's similar to someone else's and they get you confused with that other person? "Are you Marcus?" "No, I am Marcus." Using the personal pronoun in the second sentence there would create that special emphasis. "I am the one who is Marcus!" See how that works? Hopefully so.
Now we'll learn and decline the personal pronouns in the first, second and third person and how to decline them.

Singular
Case | 1st person | 2nd | 3rd (masc) | 3rd (fem) | 3rd (neut)
I. EGO | TV | IS | EA | ID
III. ME | TE | EVM | EAM | ID
IV. MEI | TVI | EIVS | EIVS | EIVS
V. MIHI | TIBI | EI | EI | EI
VI. ME | TE | EO | EA | EO
Plural
I. NOS | VOS | EI | EÆ | EA
III. NOS | VOS | EOS | EAS | EA
IV. NOSTRI | VOSTRI | EORVM | EARVM | EORVM
V. NOBIS | VOBIS | EIS | EIS | EIS
VI. NOBIS | VOBIS | EIS | EIS | EIS

Now that you've seen nouns themselves conjugate across all three genders in the first couple of lessons, it may be a little easier to see the patterns of IS, EA, ID in the singular and plural. As I mentioned, that -ORVM/-ARVM ending is still present in IV plural, and the masculine and feminine endings of III singular are both -M and -S in the plural. Case II is considered the same as case I, and therefore if I put in II it would all just be identical to I.
A little further explanation, EGO is "I", and the plural is NOS, which is equivalent to "we" in English. VOS is "you all", in a sense. IS, EA and ID all technically mean "it" and are used for common nouns more than in the sense of "he" or "she", though their usage as such is not unheard of. The plurals EI, EÆ and EA all mean "they", but if they are all masculine or all feminine, you use the appropriate form. Neuter can be used if they are all neuter or if the group is a combination of more than one gender. Despite this, you will see the feminine EÆ used a lot in such ambiguous situations anyway.
Now we need to learn just one preposition. Don't worry about if you cannot remember from your English classes what exactly a preposition is; I will review that when we do a lesson on them. Anyway, the preposition is CVM and, for now, just means "with". It does not decline, so it remains as "CVM" in every instance, regardless of what word it's linked to. The point is that, when CVM is used in tandem with a personal pronoun, you don't space them, but you stick it on the end of the pronoun. Words that act this way are called "enclitic".
So if you were to say "come with me", you would use the verb "come" (which is a different verb color than what we've learned right now) and "with me" would be expressed as "MECVM". "Come with us" would be expressed "NOBISCVM (come)". Why did I use case VI "ME/NOBIS" and not case I "EGO/NOS" just there? Because we're using "with", which describes an instrument, doesn't it? We'll learn later in finer detail that prepositions must take on certain cases in certain situations. For now, just keep in mind that CVM with these pronouns becomes enclitic.

Next on the list is demonstrative pronouns. Demonstrative pronouns indicate and distinguish different entities in reference to the speaker. That sounds complicated, but it's actually not as hard as you might think. The two primary demonstrative pronouns in English are "this" and "that". "This" refers to something relative to the speaker. "Which book?" "This book." In other words, a book right next to me or in my hands. "No, that book." "That" in English can refer to a bit more of a variety of entities: Perhaps that book is right near or in the hands of the listener, *or* maybe it's not near either the speaker or the listener. We can sort of clarify this a bit by saying "that book over there" to imply the second choice in English. In the case of Latin, there are three demonstrative pronouns: HIC, HÆC, HOC - this, ILLE, ILLA, ILLVD - that, and ISTE, ISTA, ISTVD - that (the use of ISTE indicates contempt or anger as opposed to ILLE).
The masculine and feminine forms of "that" (ILLE and ILLA) are often used in place of "he" and "she" in lieu of the personal pronouns, despite that you might think it would make more sense for the personals to go there. While they can be used, ILLE and ILLA are used for more emphasis, or particularly if the person one is referring to isn't in the vicinity. So IS and EA are like "he" and "she" while ILLE and ILLA are like "that guy" and "that girl". See how that works? The final thing that I must point out is that these demonstratives are treated like adjectives; the first rule of the Latin adjective is that it must agree with what it describes in number, gender and case. So let's start with HIC, HÆC, HOC.

HIC, HÆC, HOC - this
Singular
Masculine | Feminine | Neuter
I. HIC | HÆC | HOC
III. HVNC | HANC | HOC
IV. HVIVS | HVIVS | HVIVS
V. HVIC | HVIC | HVIC
VI. HOC | HAC | HOC
Plural
I. HI | HÆ | HÆC
III. HOS | HAS | HÆC
IV. HORVM | HARVM | HORVM
V. HIS | HIS | HIS
VI. HIS | HIS | HIS

You may notice that the forms of this pronoun are somewhat similar to the personals, which are also very similar to the way blue and green nouns of all three genders generally decline. While not identical, you can see some similarities. Moving along to the next demonstrative pronoun, you may be wow'd by even more similarities:

ILLE, ILLA, ILLVD - that
Singular
Masc | Fem | Neut
I. ILLE | ILLA | ILLVD
III. ILLVM | ILLAM | ILLVD
IV. ILLIVS | ILLIVS | ILLIVS
V. ILLI | ILLI | ILLI
VI. ILLO | ILLA | ILLO
Plural
I. ILLI | ILLÆ | ILLA
III. ILLOS | ILLAS | ILLA
IV. ILLORVM | ILLARVM | ILLORVM
V. ILLIS | ILLIS | ILLIS
VI. ILLIS | ILLIS | ILLIS

Again, not completely identical, but there are some striking similarities. Use them to help lighten your workload; don't try to just memorize every single form individually. You will start to see that Latin is pretty well organized; it is much like a very intricate puzzle. The final demonstrative pronoun we'll decline is identical to ILLE; everywhere you see -LL- you simply replace it with -ST-:

ISTE, ISTA, ISTVD - that (indicating contempt or anger)
Singular
Masc | Fem | Neut
I. ISTE | ISTA | ISTVD
III. ISTVM | ISTAM | ISTVD
IV. ISTIVS | ISTIVS | ISTIVS
V. ISTI | ISTI | ISTI
VI. ISTO | ISTA | ISTO
Plural
I. ISTI | ISTÆ | ISTA
III. ISTOS | ISTAS | ISTA
IV. ISTORVM | ISTARVM | ISTORVM
V. ISTIS | ISTIS | ISTIS
VI. ISTIS | ISTIS | ISTIS

I bet this makes you happy with how similar this is to ILLE. Now with all this declension out of the way, let's learn how to use these pronouns.

HIC, ILLE and ISTE all generally come before the nouns their connected to. That is to say, if you have expressions like "that apple belongs to me" you would likely arrange the sentence in Latin as "that apple to me belongs" or "to me that apple belongs". We can create this sentence. New vocabulary:

POMVM, POMI n. Fruit; apple
ADPERTINEO, ADPERTINERE, ADPERTINUI, -- Belong to; appertain to; (w/DAT) INTRANS

ILLVD POMVM MIHI ADPERTINET.
MIHI ILLVD POMVM ADPERTINET.

This is generally how it would go, but you can take some "poetic license" and place the verb elsewhere in some situations.

ADPERTINET MIHI ILLVD POMVM.

It belongs to me, that apple. The point of this exercise is that HIC, ILLE or ISTE will usually stay right in front of the noun. It could come after, but this is not likely. Also, take note of the fact that the apple is singular, neuter and the subject, thus our demonstrative pronoun is also singular, neuter and case I. If we were to flip-flop it a bit and use a charter...

HÆC CARTA TIBI ADPERTINET.

"This charter belongs to you." I had to use the feminine singular case I pronoun because the charter is also the same, see? I hope your brain is still functional, because we've got more pronouns to cover!  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Pronouns part two! Intensive and reflexive

Alrighty, hopefully this lesson will not be so large. The first part involves intensive pronouns. This may be a little confusing, so read carefully. These pronouns immediately follow a regular noun and emphasize it. The most common way this comes out in English is "the very (something)" or "the (something) itself". Be careful not to confuse this with what a reflexive pronoun is, which I will cover immediately after this lesson. Before this gets too confusing, let's decline it. The intensive pronoun declines as such:

IPSE, IPSA, IPSVM - the very; in person; himself/herself/itself
Singular
M | F | N
I. IPSE | IPSA | IPSVM
III. IPSVM | IPSAM | IPSVM
IV. IPSIVS | IPSIVS | IPSIVS
V. IPSI | IPSI | IPSI
VI. IPSO | IPSA | IPSO
Plural
I. IPSI | IPSÆ | IPSA
III. IPSOS | IPSAS | IPSA
IV. IPSORVM | IPSARVM | IPSORVM
V. IPSIS | IPSIS | IPSIS
VI. IPSIS | IPSIS | IPSIS

Does this chart look familiar? It does look an awful lot like ILLE and ISTE, huh? Patterns are key! So let's go over how this works. Let's say that a very famous celebrity walks past you in an airport and, out of the pure graciousness of his or her heart, is generous enough to give you a tiny nod. You want to tell your friends, don't you? You'll also want to tell them that it was that person. That very person! The one and only! The actual person! This is where you'd use IPSE. If the person is male, then you could use their name (let's pretend it's Marcus) followed by this pronoun. MARCVS IPSE... nodded at me! Marcus himself! See what I'm getting at? Let's do one for the ladies. MARIA IPSA... Maria herself! Anything can be emphasized in this way, hence, all the cases and genders. A huge loan was taken out of the bank yesterday, did you hear? It just so happens that... PECVNIAM IPSAM DEBEO. I owe that very money. Did you hear about that new author who wrote that amazing book?

LIBER, LIBRI m. Book; volume

Guess what? LIBRVM IPSVM HABEO. I have that very book. See? It's not so hard, is it?

The next part we'll have to cover are reflexive pronouns. A reflexive pronoun is one that identifies an action being done unto the one performing the verb. Basically, in English they usually look like "himself", "herself", "itself", "myself", "yourself", etc. When someone does the verb to oneself, this is where you use the reflexive pronoun.

In Latin, however, the reflexive pronouns for first and second person are identical to the personal pronouns except for I and II. Therefore, if I do something to myself, such as wash:

LAVO, LAVARE, LAVI, LAVATVS - to wash; bathe; soak.

Then you would simply use III of the first person personal pronoun, since I am the object of this verb, right? "ME LAVO." The -O ending identifies who is doing the washing, and "ME" identifies what is being washed. It's III, so you can think of it as literally meaning "I wash me". This concept makes sense, but in English, it's grammatically incorrect; we have to say "I wash myself" before the grammarians are satisfied. In Latin, however, we can get away with it. If you have a verb like love and you aim to say "I love you", then you would naturally say "TE AMO", right? But if you change it and say "TE AMAS", then you're obviously going the route of "you love you" or "you love yourself". See how that works out? Because the way the verb ending will change according to the subject, you don't need extra pronouns to do this, since the verb and the personal pronouns will do it for you.
On the other hand, the third person pronouns actually do have a different form that we'll use to identify that a verb is performed reflexively upon them. By saying "he loves him", you can't quite distinguish between whether he loves himself, or if he loves him (some other guy). We wouldn't want to mix that kind of expression up, would we? Lest people get the wrong idea about that guy. The pronoun is "SE" and because it refers to the subject, it cannot be the subject itself. In this light, it cannot take either case I or II. Thus, there are only four cases to learn for this one. Wait! It gets better. The plural forms are also identical to the singular! And lastly, it has no genders. I bet you're loving this one, huh? SE (which is actually case III) conjugates just like TE does:

SE - himself; herself; itself; oneself; themselves
Singular + Plural
III. SE
IV. SVI
V. SIBI
VI. SE

There is a slight variation to this, however. III and VI sometimes have an ever-so-slightly more emphatic form of SESE. This can generally be used indifferently from SE, but SESE is preferred when there is particular emphasis intended. So how do we know if this pronoun is singular or plural? Because the verb that's being performed will be either singular or plural! If you say SE AMANT, then you know that it must be "they love themselves", since the pronoun refers to the subject, which is what the verb ending is decided by, "they love". On a final note, you can consider IV to mean "his/her/its own" and VI to mean "by himself/herself/itself".

Now, there's a reason I gave these pronouns together. You can use these in tandem with each other to create a special meaning. The use of IPSE along with SE can either emphasize the subject or the reflexive pronoun. For example: SE IPSE AMAT. "He himself loves himself." Because IPSE is masculine and case I, we know that it refers to emphasizing the subject and it is a "he". However, if we make IPSE agree with SE, then the meaning changes a little. SE IPSVM AMAT. "He loves only himself." We're emphasizing that he loves himself with IPSVM, and not emphasizing that he loves himself as we were with IPSE. See the difference? With this, we can emphasize the subject or the reflexive, even if their whole clauses apart! This concept may be somewhat confusing at first, but fear not! It will come with practice. Just make sure you practice! Remember SESE? Yes, emphasis! It is often likely to see SESE in tandem with IPSE to create that extra emphasis. SESE IPSVM AMAT. He really loves only himself! He's quite the vain one, isn't he? So a recap, SE IPSE AMAT = he (himself) loves himself. SE IPSVM AMAT = he loves himself.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Pronouns part three! Interrogative and relative

Put your hard hats on; this lesson's going to be a kicker. We're going to start with interrogative pronouns. These equate to English as "who?" or "what?". In many cases involving the question "who?", you don't necessarily know whether the person you're inquiring about is a man or a woman. Sometimes you might, but you also might not. In this light, the Latin interrogative pronoun for "who" is called "common gender", meaning that it is both masculine and feminine. In the case of "what" thing, you use the neuter form.
Now, the first kicker you're going to run into is that only the singular forms are common-gendered. The plural forms have seperate genders for masculine and feminine. However, the use of the plural interrogative is pretty rare, so you won't have too much to worry about there. Let's decline!

QVIS, QVID - Who? What?
Singular
M/F | N
I. QVIS | QVID
III. QVEM | QVID
IV. CVIVS | CVIVS
V. CVI | CVI
VI. QVO | QVO
Plural
M | F | N
I. QVI | QVÆ | QVÆ
III. QVOS | QVAS | QVÆ
IV. QVORVM | QVARVM | QVORVM
V. QVIBVS | QVIBVS | QVIBVS
VI. QVIBVS | QVIBVS | QVIBVS

Alright, now let's work out how to use these. Let's pick a verb. How about owing money? I bet tax collectors want to know the answer to that question all the time. Who owes money? It could be a man or a woman, and also take note of the fact that the answer is likely to be he or she owes the money, so the verb used in the question must be third person as well. Even if the answer isn't going to be in third person (let's say that I still owe that very money), the question must remain in third person, as occurs in English. We don't want any cave-tax collectors running around here. "WHO OWE MONEY?" So we'll have: QVIS PECVNIAM DEBET? DEBET PECVNIAM QVIS? PECVNIAM DEBET QVIS? QVIS DEBET PECVNIAM? Any word order construction here is acceptable. Generally, it will go the way the first sentence is worded, but it doesn't matter all that much. PECVNIAM IPSAM DEBEO. Remember IPSE? I hope so. Let's try a few more. ARDET QVID? What's burning? QVID TENEO? What am I holding? In the first sentence, we emphasize the fact that something is burning, as we place more urgency on the fact that there is a destructive fire going rather than whatever it might be burning, right? In the second, perhaps someone has given you something strange, and perhaps you don't care as much about the fact that it's in your hand but would rather know what the heck it is. Remember that your present tense verbs can qualify in English as "I hold; I do hold; I am holding". "It burns; it does burn; it is burning", etc. Now let's make it a little more complicated. "Who do you love?" The answer will be along the lines of "I love ____." The person that will go in this blank will be the object of the verb "love", right? Therefore the interrogative pronoun must act as the object, as it's filling in for the object of our affection. We were lucky before, because the neuter "what" is the same in both I and III. However, we can't get off so easily with the common "who", so we have to be careful to put the interrogative as the same case of the word that will replace it in the answer. QVEM AMAS? ILLAM AMO. I love her (that girl). Remember ADPERTINERE? "To whom does this apple belong to? CVI ILLVD POMVM ADPERTINET? In the case that it belongs to me, I would say MIHI ADPERTINET. The interrogative that fills in for MIHI must also be V, thus we have CVI. It may be easier to think of the question in the same construction as the answer. So "I love her" will be question-ified as "you love who?" Now it's easier to see what case the pronoun should be, right? "You are holding what?" I'll say "I am holding something", and whatever that something is must be III. Follow?
One final note. Even if the subject of the question is plural, let's say, in the case of "what are they holding?", the answer will be "they are holding _____". So the pronoun can still remain singular; only the verb will change to reflect the subject. QVID TENENT? Even if the answer might turn out to be plural ("They are holding apples"/POMA TENENT) it is not necessary to make the interrogative plural. As I said, the plural is quite rare; half the time, you hardly know if the answer will be plural or not. If you do happen to know that the answer will be plural, you can use it if you so desire. If it's a "who" question and you happen to know that the answer will be plural and you know the gender of the answers, by all means. As I mentioned off-handedly before, you will often see the feminine used in these ambiguous situations a lot; you're likely to see QVÆ/QVAS/QVARVM [verb]? even if the group is not all women. However, in the Roman times, sexism wasn't as frowned upon as it is now, so in some places where the verb might come off as something men would be more likely to do, you'll see QVI/QVOS/QVORVM. The key here (in the Roman era) is that it's whatever comes to mind first when you think of who might be doing the verb or being the object of it or whatever. If you're asking a guy who he loves and you know that there is more than one person, he's more likely to love a bunch of women, right? QVAS AMAS? Or vice-versa for asking a woman. QVOS AMAS? See? Hopefully so, because there's another complex part to this lesson.

Relative pronouns, here we go. I'm going to have to explain a few somewhat complicated grammatical ideas that we use regularly in English before this will make sense. First is clauses. A clause is the smallest grammatical unit that still expresses a complete thought. I buy apples. I love apples. A relative pronoun will link two clauses together to make one complex clause. When we have two sentences linked by a relative pronoun, one clause will be the main clause and the other will be the "relative clause", which is what will be linked to the relative pronoun. First things first, declining the relative pronoun.

QVI, QVÆ, QVOD - Who; which; that
Singular
M | F | N
I. QVI | QVÆ | QVOD
III. QVEM | QVAM | QVOD
IV. CVIVS | CVIVS | CVIVS
V. CVI | CVI | CVI
VI. QVO | QVA | QVO
Plural
I. QVI | QVÆ | QVÆ
III. QVOS | QVAS | QVÆ
IV. QVORVM | QVARVM | QVORVM
V. QVIBVS | QVIBVS | QVIBVS
VI. QVIBVS | QVIBVS | QVIBVS

This bears a few striking resemblances to the interrogative pronouns, doesn't it? While patterns are indeed key, this is a case where you have to be careful not to mix them up; these pronouns are almost too similar. Now, before we dive into using this, let's refresh our memories on how to use relative pronouns and clauses in English. Here, we'll have two separate complete thoughts. "I think." and "Latin is hard." With a relative pronoun, we can stick these two together. "I think that Latin is hard." Easy, right? "The boy loves the girl." "The girl has a sword." Together now. "The boy loves the girl who has a sword." "I see the boy." "The boy loves you." Thus, "I see the boy who loves you."
Before we can put this together in Latin, we'll have to learn some new vocabulary, so let's do so.

PVELLA, PVELLÆ f. Girl
PVER, PVERI m. Boy
AMBVLO, AMBVLARE, AMBVLAVI, AMBVLATVS - to walk
VIDEO, VIDERE, VIDI, VISVS - to see

Now for the explanation of how to use the relatives. You may be wondering, how do we know which gender and case to use? The answer is fairly simple. The relative pronoun takes on the gender and number of the noun that it's related to in the main clause, and it takes on the case of what the noun would be in the relative clause if it were expressed by itself. That may be confusing, so let's do some examples to help clear this up. We'll do them separately, and then together with the relative pronoun.

PVER PVELLAM AMAT. PVELLA GLADIVM HABET.
When you stick these two together, "who" is going to fill in for "girl" in the second sentence, isn't it? And this "girl" is mentioned in the first sentence. She is singular and feminine. In the second sentence, she's the subject. Thus, our pronoun will be feminine, singular and I.
PVER PVELLAM QVÆ GLADIVM HABET AMAT.
See? It's not so hard. You'll often see the main verb at the end of the sentence and the relative clause somewhere in the middle, so this sentence looks like "the boy the girl who the sword has loves". The key here is that the relative clause acts like a gigantic adjective, and in Latin, adjectives often immediately follow the word they describe instead of coming before it like in English. Don't worry if this is too confusing now; we'll cover adjectives later. For now, let's have the boy and girl switch places.
PVELLA PVERVM AMAT. PVER GLADIVM HABET.
Here, the boy is going to be filled in by the relative pronoun. He's singular but masculine, and he's also the subject of the second sentence, which is what will become our relative clause. So we'll have a masculine singular pronoun of case I.
PVELLA PVERVM QVI GLADIVM HABET AMAT.
Let's try the next one. "I see the boy who loves you." Separately: "I see the boy. The boy loves you." Here we'll have the same pronoun because the boy is masculine, singular, and in the relative clause, the subject.
PVERVM QVI TE AMAT VIDEO.
Let's change it up a little. "I see the boy whom you love." A bit more complicated, huh? Separate the clauses if you have to. "I see the boy." "The boy you love." In the first sentence, he's still singular and masculine. In the second, however, he's the object of your love. Thus, our pronoun will be singular, masculine but case III this time.
PVERVM QVEM AMAS VIDEO.
Let's make it even more complex. Remember CVM? "With"? It becomes "enclitic", remember what that means? Let's say that "I see the boy with whom you are walking." When we say "with", we have to use VI, right? Let's pull the clauses apart now and take a better look. "I see the boy." "The boy you are walking with." He's still singular and masculine, but you're walking with him in the relative clause. So our pronoun will be VI here, and we'll stick -CVM on the end of it.
PVERVM QVOCVM AMBVLAS VIDEO.
See how the relative works now? With the interrogatives, QVIS and QVID, we worry more about whether or not we're talking about a "who" or a "what". With the relatives, the gender is defined only by the noun its filling in for and "who" "that" or "which" is determined by the context.

Now, there's only one more part to this lesson. I know this has been a long and probably pretty grueling one, but bear with me. Just one more little part, and then you can go let your melting brain leak out of your ears.
Latin has what is often called "interrogative adjectives" which function similarly to the interrogative pronouns, but these "adjectives" often translate into "which?" Luckily for you, the interrogative adjectives are identical to the relative pronouns; there won't be a new table to learn here. The only problem you might be worried about is how to tell whether or not the relative pronoun is being used as a relative or an interrogative adjective. Worry not! The first and most obvious indicator is whether or not a question is involved. If you see the relative pronoun and there is no question, then it's intended to be a relative.
The interrogative adjectives always have a noun that they are connected to; thus, their number, gender and case must agree with the noun they're linked to. We'll start with the sentences I used earlier.
PVER QVI TE AMAT VIDEO. - I see the boy who loves you.
Using the interrogative pronoun in this context will net you this expression:
QVIS ME AMAT? - Who loves me?
But what if we know it's a boy, and we want to know which boy? Here, we'll use the interrogative adjective. Since the boy is singular, masculine and the subject of this thought, we'll have a masculine singular case I pronoun.
QVI PVER ME AMAT? - Which boy loves me?
See the difference? Let's try another in the context of the first few sentences.
QVIS GLADVIM HABET? - Who has the sword?
PVELLA GLADIVM HABET. - A girl has the sword.
QVÆ PVELLA GLADIVM HABET? - Which girl has the sword?
PVELLAM QVAM AMO. - The girl that I love.
See how you can tell where the interrogative adjective, the relative and the interrogative pronouns are? The context usually tells you which one to go with. Let's use some with case IV, since we haven't seen any of that yet. Let's say that the boy is a slave (I'm sorry, young man!) and his master loves apples. But we don't know whose master likes them. Let's ask. But first, new vocabulary:

DOMINVS, DOMINI m. Master, owner, lord.

So we'll have our question look like this:
CVIVS DOMINVS POMVM AMAT? - Whose master loves apples? (Or, more literally, "the master of whom loves apples?")
DOMINVS PVERI POMVM AMAT. - The boy's master loves apples.
Oh, what if there are several boys who have masters? Coincidentally, the interrogative adjective will look the same, since IV for both is identical.
CVIVS PVERI DOMINVS POMVM AMAT? - Which boy's master loves apples?
DOMINVS ILLIVS PVERI. - That boy's master.
Remember that, since we didn't know about which master it was that loves apples, it comes first. New information first.

Let's keep going with more examples, using case V now.
CVI ILLVD POMVM DO? - Who do I give this apple to?
DOMINO PVERI. - To the boy's master.
DOMINO CVIVS PVERI POMVM DO? - To which boy's master do I give (this) apple to?
Even though we're giving that apple to someone, we're trying to point out one boy out of a group of them, thus the adjective has to match "boy", which is IV here.

See the difference better between interrogative pronouns and adjectives? Let's go through a few other cases and throw in a plural or two. "What do you see?" or "You see what?"
QVID VIDES?
POMA VIDEO. - I see apples.
QVÆ POMA VIDES? - Which apples do you see?
See how I had to use the neuter III plural in the interrogative adjective sense? Because we know I see apples, and that they are neuter as well as the fact that they are what I see. Last case.

QVOCVM ILLA AMBVLAT? - Who is she walking with?
PVERO CVM AMBVLAT. - She is walking with a boy.
QVOCVM PVERO AMBVLAT? - Which boy is she walking with?
Is it all falling into place? Hopefully so. I think that will cover this lesson. Yes, it was quite complicated, but I gave tons of examples, and I hope that they will help you to understand the way these particular pronouns are used. As always, there are threads here for you to ask questions in. Don't be afraid to use them!
 

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Pronouns part four! Indefinite

After the last lesson, I decided to try and get one for you that isn't so complex. It will build on the last lesson, so hopefully I won't have to explain so much.
First, we have "indefinite" pronouns. These are merely pronouns that identify something unspecific. The first few that we'll learn together are "someone/something" and "anyone/anything". From the last lesson, we had the interrogatives "QVIS" and "QVID" for "who" and "what", right? We'll use these two in forming our indefinites, someone or anyone. All you have to do is stick "ALI-" in front of it, and thus, you'll use these the same way. Easy, right? The quis/quid part will decline exactly like it did in the last lesson, so there'll be no new chart to learn. ALIQVIS, ALIQVID - "some/anyone, some/anything". You use it exactly the same way you would if it were an interrogative; ALIQVIS is both masculine and feminine while ALIQVID is neuter.
QVIS PECVNIAM DEBET? Who owes the money?
ALIQVIS PECVNIAM DEBET. Someone owes the money.
ARDET QVID? What's burning?
ALIQVID ARDET. Something's burning.
QVEM AMAS? Who do you love?
ALIQVEM AMO. I love someone.
CVI ADPERTINET ILLVD POMVM? To whom does that apple belong?
ILLVD POMVM ALICVI ADPERTINET. That apple belongs to someone.
QVAS AMAS? Who (all) do you love?
ALIQVAS AMO. I love "someones". (Or "some number of people", if you want to be grammatically correct.)
Or:
ALIQVIS NON AMO. I do not love anyone.
Something I should have mentioned way back when we first started learning verbs, NON means "not" and is how you negate your verb. NON AMO, I do not love. NON HABET. He/she does not have.
With "NON" or "not" there, it can be taken as "anyone" instead of "someone", as it's still indefinite that way. See? Not too terribly difficult, right?

Next is the indefinite adjective, which functions just like the interrogative adjective, save for the indefinite aspect to it. It declines almost the same way as the interrogative, except the singular feminine (QVÆ) will become just (QVA). These translate as "something" or "anything", where the underlined part is replaced by any regular noun.
PVER QVI TE AMAT VIDEO. I see the boy who loves you.
ALIQVEM PVERVM NON AMO. I do not love any boy.
You can see here that ALIQVI agrees in number, gender and case with whatever it is intended to describe.
POMA HABES? Do you have apples?
ALIQVÆ POMA HABES? Do you have any apples?
ALIQVÆ POMA NON HABEO. ALIQVAM PECVNIAM HABEO. I do not have any apples. I do have some money (in order to buy apples).
Easy-peasy, right? Let's learn and utilize a few other indefinite pronouns.

QVISQVAM, QVIDQVAM - some/anyone, some/anything
The only difference between this one and the previous one is that this particular pronoun is used when the expression is negative or is expected to be negative. Just remember that it's the first part that will decline and you just tack on -QVAM after it.
QVISQVAM PECVNIAM HABET!? Does anyone have money!?

QVISQVE, QVIDQVE - each one, everyone
Same story as before: remember to decline QVIS, QVID and tack on -QVE to create this meaning here.
QVIQVE VOSTRI MIHI PECVNIAM DEBET. Each one of you owes money to me.
This can also be used in the adjective sense, with QVI, QVÆ, QVOD plus -QVE.
QVODQVE POMVM HABET. He has every apple.

I have one more tiny little detail to point out before I close this lesson. When you have ALIQVI, ALIQVA, ALIQVOD after certain words, the ALI- will drop off. These words are:
SI - if
NISI - if not
NE - (special usage) not
NVM - if; really (expecting a negative answer)
NONNE - is it not (that)?
QVO - where?
QVANDO - when?
AVT - or
SEV - or if
These are called "conjunctions". It's simply a word that connects two words or clauses together. Thus, we might have constructions like this:
SI QVÆ POMA HABES... "If you have any apples..." (Instead of "ALIQVÆ POMA HABES" or "you have some/any apples".)
As you can see, we would put something after the dot, dot, dot. Thus, "if" is a conjunction, joining this clause with another. Another example:
NISI QVAM PECVNIAM HABES... "If you do not have any money..."
Because we have "NISI" for "if not", we don't need to use "NON". NISI is actually a contraction of NE + SI, thus we technically already have NON there, so don't say it twice! Another one:
NVM QVIS ME AMAT? "Does anyone love me?" (Expecting the answer to be no.)

Let's learn a few other useful indefinites. Remember that the pronoun form can fill in for a noun, and the adjective form must have another noun accompanying it. The easiest way to immediately identify the pronouns here is the neuter QVID is a pronoun and QVOD is the adjective. This one can go both ways; you'll use QVIS, QVID plus the tack-on to make the pronoun and QVI, QVÆ, QVOD plus the tack-on to make the adjective.
QVISCVMQVE, QVIDCVMQVE - Whoever, whatever
QVISCVMQVE CARTAM HABET... - "Whoever has the charter..."
QVAMCVMQVE PECVNIAM DEBES... "Whatever money you owe..."
QVIDCVMQVE TENES... - "Whatever you are holding..."

QVIDAM, QVÆDAM, QVIDDAM - A certain one/thing *Pronoun!
One particularity is the way this one declines; it obviously has separate genders for the pronoun form. Also, where the pronoun ends with -M, it will sometimes become -N. Furthermore, in the transition between the pronoun and the adjective form, the only thing that will actually change is that QVID- will become QVOD-. I'll decline this in a chart for you so you can see how it works.

QVIDAM, QVÆDAM, QVIDDAM
Singular
M | F | N
I. QVIDAM | QVÆDAM | QVIDDAM
III. QVEMDAM | QVAMDAM | QVIDDAM
IV. CVIVSDAM | CVIVSDAM | CVIVSDAM
V. CVIDAM | CVIDAM | CVIDAM
VI. QVODAM | QVADAM | QVODAM
Plural
I. QVIDAM | QVÆDAM | QVÆDAM
III. QVOSDAM | QVASDAM | QVÆDAM
IV. QVORVNDAM | QVARVNDAM | QVORVNDAM
V. QVIBVSDAM | QVIBVSDAM | QVIBVSDAM
VI. QVIBVSDAM | QVIBVSDAM | QVIBVSDAM

Now change it to an adjective. I will bold the only parts that change.

QVIDAM, QVÆDAM, QVODDAM
Singular
M | F | N
I. QVIDAM | QVÆDAM | QVODDAM
III. QVEMDAM | QVAMDAM | QVODDAM
IV. CVIVSDAM | CVIVSDAM | CVIVSDAM
V. CVIDAM | CVIDAM | CVIDAM
VI. QVODAM | QVADAM | QVODAM

The plurals are identical to the pronouns. See how the plural IV -M becomes -N in the pronouns? Take note of that as well. Make sure you also take careful note of the difference between "QVODDAM" (neuter, case I or III) and "QVODAM" (masculine or neuter, case VI) as well as the difference between "QVIDDAM" (neuter, case I or III) and "QVIDAM" (masculine, case I, singular or plural).
QVIDDAM DEBEO... "I owe a certain thing..."
QVIDAM MIHI QVODDAM POMVM DEBET. "A certain someone (male) owes me a certain apple." (In other words, let's say he ate my apple, so now he owes me one to replace the one he ate.)
Alright, let's take a breather. Go over this again and again until you've got it down, and then come back refreshed and ready to take on the next lesson.
 

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

LINGVALATINA - Adjectives: Green Adjectives

Our favorite way of describing things, adjectives! Before we get into the declension and charts, we first have to get to the bottom of just what an adjective is. Essentially it describes a noun or what they call a "noun phrase". A noun phrase is simply a phrase in which the lead is a noun, such as "the emperor of Rome". An easy way to pick out the noun phrase is to give something to it, figuratively speaking. If you give the emperor of Rome an apple, it belongs to him, right? Therefore it's the "emperor of Rome's apple". See how you put the 's on "Rome" even though it doesn't belong to Rome itself, but belongs to the emperor? Noun phrase. Very simple, yes?
Now, in English, adjectives usually come right before the noun. "The red apple." In Latin, however, it can come in either position, before or after. The rule of thumb is that it usually comes after the noun (so we'll say "the apple red" in Latin), but it can come before if you want to put it that way. Doing so will create a special emphasis, or a slightly different meaning. For example, when you say "a great man" in Latin, saying it in the order "man great" will seem pretty neutral. Saying it the other way around, however, will emphasize the fact that he's great. The key here is the fact that Latin has free word order. Because of this, considerable emphasis falls on what you say first, since that's what came to mind first. "Great man!" You thought of "great" before "man". You thought about the fact that he's a great one before the fact that he's a man. If you say it the other way around, you might come off saying that he's great, yes, but just a man. See how it works?

Alright, now on to the function of adjectives. In Latin, they must agree with the noun they describe in three categories: number, gender and case. This means that one adjective will have forms to qualify for two numbers, three genders and six cases. I'm not going to lie, that's a lot of forms to memorize. But fear not! Green adjectives are so-called because every form of the greens you have seen before. Use those patterns!
Now, the first adjective we'll learn is BONVS, "good". In the dictionary I gave you, as in most dictionaries, adjectives will be given in three forms: the masculine case I singular, the feminine case I singular and the neuter case I singular. Thus, BONVS will appear as "bonus, bona, bonum" in the dictionary. Sometimes, the adjective will be given like this: "bonus, -a, -um". That just means that where -us is, you can replace -a or -um for the other two genders. I will define adjectives like this in the future. So let us decline our first adjective.

BONVS, BONA, BONVM - good
MascSing | FemSing | NeutSing - MascPlur | FemPlur | NeutPlur
I BONVS | BONA | BONVM - BONI | BONÆ | BONA
II BONE | BONA | BONE - BONI | BONÆ | BONA
III BONVM | BONAM | BONVM - BONOS | BONAS | BONA
IV BONI | BONÆ | BONI - BONORVM | BONARVM | BONORVM
V BONO | BONÆ | BONO - BONIS | BONIS | BONIS
VI BONO | BONA | BONO - BONIS | BONIS | BONIS

PVER BONVS, good boy. BONVS PVER, good boy. What about "I have a good boy"? The boy will become the object of what you have, huh? PVERVM BONVM HABEO. Or if you really want to mean he's a good boy. BONVM PVERVM HABEO. What if you've got a girl? PVELLAM BONAM HABEO. Easy, right?
As with the green nouns, green adjectives also have strong and weak variations. We'll learn the strong green adjectives first.

LIBER, LIBERA, LIBERVM - free
Ms | Fs | Ns - Mp | Fp | Np
I LIBER | LIBERA | LIBERVM - LIBERI | LIBERÆ | LIBERA
II LIBER | LIBERA | LIBERE - LIBERI | LIBERÆ | LIBERA
III LIBERVM | LIBERAM | LIBERVM - LIBEROS | LIBERAS | LIBERA
IV LIBERI | LIBERÆ | LIBERI - LIBERORVM | LIBERARVM | LIBERORVM
V LIBERO | LIBERÆ | LIBERO - LIBERIS | LIBERIS | LIBERIS
VI LIBERO | LIBERA | LIBERO - LIBERIS | LIBERIS | LIBERIS

As you can see, it conjugates just like the first chart, the stem just acts like the strong stem of green nouns, like VESPER. You just add on to LIBER-, and that makes LIBER the nominative singular masculine form for "free". You'll love this. Is that a "free book" you have there? Yes, LIBRVM LIBERVM HABEO. Remember that LIBER was "book" as well? It's a weak noun, however, so you'll be able to see that LIBRVM is "book" in case III and LIBERVM is case III masculine singular for "free". This is a bit of a misinterpretation, though. LIBER, LIBERA, LIBERVM means "free" as in "free from impediment, prison or confinement", not necessarily "free of charge" like I use it there. It is what eventually became the word "liberate". So my book is not in prison, nope. Certainly not. It will live a happy life of freedom being read by me. I almost had you. How about this!

LIBER, LIBERI m. Children
LIBRA, LIBRÆ f. Scales; balance
LIBRO, LIBRARE, LIBRAVI, LIBRATVS - to balance
LIBO, LIBARE, LIBAVI, LIBATVS - to nibble
ET - and

LIBERI LIBERI LIBROS LIBRA LIBRANT ET ILLVM LIBANT.

"The free children are balancing books (on) scales and nibbling them." ;D

Anyway, enough joking around. Now the weak stem greens. Just like the nouns, the -E- drops out when it's declined.

RVBER, RVBRA, RVBRVM - red
Ms | Fs | Ns - Mp | Fp | Np
I RVBER | RVBRA | RVBRVM - RVBRI | RVBRÆ | RVBRA
II RVBER | RVBRA | RVBRE - RVBRI | RVBRÆ | RVBRA
III RVBRVM | RVBRAM | RVBRVM - RVBROS | RVBRAS | RVBRA
IV RVBRI | RVBRÆ | RVBRI - RVBRORVM | RVBRARVM | RVBRORVM
V RVBRO | RVBRÆ | RVBRO - RVBRIS | RVBRIS | RVBRIS
VI RVBRO | RVBRA | RVBRO - RVBRIS | RVBRIS | RVBRIS

So what color was that apple? Oh yeah, it was red. POMVM RVBRVM. Likewise, just like the green nouns, green adjectives also have stems where the word ends with -IVS, -IA, -IVM, but also like the greens, there is no real need for another chart, as this will conjugate identically to BONVS, but with that extra I in the stem. One such adjective is:

TEMERARIVS, TEMERARIA, TEMERARIVM - casual; rash

The only thing to keep in mind is that IV singular masculine and neuter for this is TEMERARII. Keep that -I- there in the stem.
Now here's a kicker for you. What happens when there is more than one adjective describing the same noun? In English, we have to separate them with commas. "A good, red apple." In Latin, there will be no need for any commas, but what order do they go in? Here's where it gets a little tricky. Remember "fact vs opinion"? One can be proven while the other can only be agreed upon. Adjectives of all kinds fall into one of these two categories. "Red" falls into fact. You can look at it and see with your own eyes that it's a red apple. "Good" falls into opinion. Not everyone likes apples. In Latin, the facts usually stand closer to the noun, while the opinions come outside. So "a good, red apple" in Latin can be "POMVM RVBRVM BONVM" or you can flip it and say "BONVM RVBRVM POMVM". Following the patterns of emphasis, if you want to say that you really like apples in general and this one just happens to be red, say "BONVM POMVM RVBRVM". If you really like apples that are red, say "RVBRVM POMVM BONVM". See how it all works? Let's get in a few more adjectives.

LÆTVS, LÆTA, LÆTVM - happy
STRENVVS, STRENVA, STRENVVM - vigorous; strenuous
MAGNVS, MAGNA, MAGNVM - large
MVLTVS, MVLTA, MVLTVM - much; many
PVLCHER, PVLCHRA, PVLCHRVM - pretty
ALTER, ALTERA, ALTERVM - other (of two things)
VTER, VTRA, VTRVM - either
NEVTER, NEVTRA, NEVTRVM - neither

Got them all? So your next question may be what happens when there are more than two adjectives? As before, facts closer to the noun and opinions outside. Make sure you keep the facts together with the facts and the opinions with the opinions. It's not likely to see more than three adjectives describing one noun. When that happens, you start to sound silly in both Latin and English, so such is usually avoided. Let's try some examples. "Many pretty red apples." You can look and see that there are many and that they are red, but are apples really that pretty? You decide. So it'll look like this. POMVM MVLTVM RVBRVM PVLCHRVM. Or: POMVM RVBRVM MVLTVM PVLCHRVM. Or: PVLCHRVM MVLTVM RVBRVM POMVM. Or: PVLCHRVM POMVM RVBRVM MVLTVM. Whichever construction fits your desire for whatever emphasis you should have in mind. Just remember that the opinions need to stick together, as do the facts.

I think that about covers the adjectives. Next we'll go on to look at the yellow nouns. Prepare yourself!