Welcome to Gaia! ::

Basically, this post is to talk about what this forum is and give you some resources that can help you use it.

Resources:

An excellent online English-Latin and Latin-English dictionary:

Perseus Tufts Online Dictionary

A faster, but less complete dictionary:

Latin Wordlist and Grammar Aid


Forum Description:

This forum is for people just starting Latin- in otherwords, people in Latin I. While people with more experience may post, they must adhere to the lists of permitted grammatical forms for this forum. I realize that not all Latin I classes are the same, so in addition to which grammatical forms are allowed, I'll be posting descriptions of how to use them.

Posts in this forum assume you know:

Declension of all nouns, including 3rd declension I-stems
Conjugation of all verbs in the indicative and imperative voices
Ablative of time when
Prior, contemporaneous, and futurity participles
Adjectives of one ending

If this doesn't square with your knowledge of the language, please tell me- I'm working from my own Latin 1 experience, which obviously isn't everyone's. Also, keep in mind that I'm only finishing my second year of Latin- my knowledge of the language clearly isn't perfect. Tell me if you notice a mistake.


Grammatical Form Descriptions
First Declension Nouns:

Nouns whose nominative ends in "a", and genitive ends in "ae"

Examples: rosa -ae (f.), causa -ae (f.), fortuna -ae (f.)

They are almost always feminine, but some, mostly professions, are masculine. (ex. nauta, agricola)

Declention of first declension nouns:

SINGULAR

Nom. -a
Gen. -ae
Dat. -ae
Acc. -am
Abl -ae
(Voc -a)

PLURAL

Nom. -ae
Gen. -arum
Dat. -is
Acc -as
Abl -is
(Voc -ae)

Second Declension Nouns

Second declension nouns are either masculine or neuter (and very rarely, feminine, mostly for tree names), but the two genders are declined slightly differently.

Masculine:

SINGULAR

-us
-i
-o
-um
-o
(-e)

PLURAL

-i
-orum
-is
-os
-is
(-i)


Neuter:

SINGULAR

-um
-i
-o
-um
-o
(-um)

PLURAL

-a
-orum
-is
-a
-is
(-a)

Some second declension feminine nouns you might want to know are domus -i which means "house" or "home" and humus -i which means "ground" or "soil" (domus can also be a fifth declension noun) As you may have guessed, these are declined like masculine second declension nouns.


Third Declension Nouns and Third Declension I-stems

Third declension nouns are the most common nouns in Latin, and contain nouns of every gender in equal proportions. Masculine and femine are declined in the same way, neuter slightly differently.

Masculine/Feminine:

SINGULAR

----
-is
-i
-em
-e


PLURAL

-es
-um
-ibus
-es
-ibus

Neuter

SINGULAR

----
-is
-i
----
-e

PLURAL

-a
-um
-ibus
-a
-ibus

Third Declension I-stems

Some third declension nouns are i-stems, which means they decline strangely. There are ways to predict which nouns are and aren't i-stems, but there's no way to tell for sure without looking it up in the dictionary. If the nominative and genitive are both two syllables and share the second syllable, or if the nominative of a word ends in three consonants, then chances are it's an i-stem, though.

Declension of I stems:

Masculine/Feminine

SINGULAR

---
-i
----
-i

PLURAL

-es
-ium
-ibus
-es
-ibus


Neuter

SINGULAR

----
-is
-i
---
-i

PLURAL

-ia
-ium
-ibus
-ia
-ibus



Fourth Declension

SINGULAR

-es
-ei
-ei
-em
-e

PLURAL

-es
-erum
-ebus
-es
-ebus


Fifth Declension

Masculine/Feminine

SINGULAR

-us
-us
-ui
-um
-u

PLURAL

-us
-um
-ibus
-us
-ibus


Neuter

SINGULAR

-u
-us
-u
-u
-u

PLURAL

-ua
-uum
-ibus
-ua
-ibus