Month 1 of learning, covering topic 1-5 from the book Learn Latin from the Romans.

Vocabulary & Things to Memorise

Nouns

1. agricola, -ae, (m.) - farmer
2. dea, -ae, (f.) - goddess
3. deus, -i, (m.) - god
4. poeta, -ae, (m.) - poet
5. puella, -ae, (f.) - girl
6. amicus, -i, (m.) - friend
7. equus, -i, (m.) - horse
8. servus, -i, (m.) - slave
9. oppidum, -i, (n.) - town
10. bellum, -i, (n.) - war
11. verbum, -i, (n.) - word
12. consilium, -i, (n.) - advice, plan
13. epistula, -ae, (f.) - letter
14. pecunia, -ae, (f.) - money

Adjectives

1. bonus, -a, -um - good
2. magnus, -a, -um - big
3. meus, -a, -um - my
4. tuus, -a, -um - your (singular)
5. novus, -a, -um - new

Others

1. -ne, suffix - mark the question
2. et, conjunction - and
3. non, adverb - not

Verbs

Irregular - sum

Declension

Declension I ( -a )

Declension II ( -us, -um )

Conjugations of Active Indicative Group III Verbs

pp. : Principle Part to get stem from

Grammar & Concepts

Nouns and Declension

Each noun and its variations can be defined on 3 dimensional axes:

1. Genders: Masculine, Feminine and Netur
2. Quantity: Singular, Plural
3. Cases: Nominative, Accusative, Vocative, Genitive (4 of 6 cases covered in this month)

Each noun can have only one gender.

Based on genitive suffix, a noun can be classified into different declension, and each declension has their own rules of “declening” thing across the rest of dimensions.

Specifically, each declension define it’s own subspace spanned by Quantity and Cases

The first two declensions and their rules:

Declension I ( -a )

Most of the noun in this group is feminine.

Declension II ( -us, -um )

Most of the noun in this group is masculine or netur.

Cases

Cases indicate the grammatic role of the noun:

1. Nominative: Denote the subject that initiate the action.
2. Accusative: Denote the direct reciever of the action.
3. Vocative: Calling of the object.
4. Genitive: Denote the possession relationship, that the noun (object) is the owner of something else.

Adjectives

An adjective is used to describe the noun.

The adjective and its noun must be agreed in case, gender and quantity

For this reason, adjectives have variants of all three genders.

Verbs, Tense and Conjugation

Each verb and its variations can be defined in a 4 dimensional configuration space, spanned by the axes:

1. Pronouns:
   • first person singular (1s)
   • second person singular (2s)
   • third person singular (3s)
   • first person plural (1p)
   • second person plural (2p)
   • third person plural (3p)
2. Tenses
   • Present (Pr)
   • Future (Fu)
   • Perfect (Pe)
   • Imperfect (Im) (Not Covered)
   • Pluperfect (Pp) (Not Covered)
   • Future Perfect (Fp) (Not Covered)
3. Voice:
   • Active
   • Passive (Not Covered)
4. Form & Mood:
   • Indicative
   • Subjunctive (Not Covered)
   • Imperative (Not Covered)
   • Indefinitive

With three additional forms for verb-noun, verb-adjectives which will be covered in later topics.

Conjugation of Verbs

Similar to noun’s declension, conjugation of the verb defines the how suffix changes as it moves through the “configuration space”.

The indefinitive form of the verb gives conjugation group of the verb.

The key of any conjugation rules is to identify the stem and the list of compatible suffixes.

Principle Parts - Giving the Desired Stem

Each verb has four principle parts.

From these parts, all the variations in the configuration space can be dervied by attaching compatible suffixes.

The four principle parts (pp):

• I Present Active First Person Singular Indicative (1sPrAInd)
• II Indefinitive
• III Perfect Active First Person Singular Indicative (1sPeAInd)
• IV Supine

Suffixes - Determining the Variants

Suffixes varies from dimensions to dimensions.

Each suffix must be paired with specific stem for a valid conjugation.

Current we have learned 3 tense and 6 pronouns of active indicative, conjugation III.

Note: There are some cases where two supposely different tense share same suffix and stem, for example legit (3sPr) and legit (3sPe), in this case, the disambigious will be the length of the first vowel of the stem:

• short vowel for present tense
• long vowel for perfect tense

Tense

We currently only covered three tenses:

1. Present: The action that is happening at the moment. It capture these two meaning in English: a present fact (I eat) or an action is happening now (I am eating)
2. Future: Action that will happen some point in the future, it is a destined. Same as the one in English.
3. Perfect: Action that happened in the past, Same as the one in English.

NOTE

For perfect sense, it is not clear whether the action is still ongoing or has been completed. for this you will need to use other tense to clarify (namely: imperfect or pluperfect). More on this in later topics.

Sentence Composition

Latin has flexible word order when composing a sentence.

Generally speaking, the most common word order is the Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) form.

For example, Verba scribo (Words I am writing $\rightarrow$ I am writing words).

Forming the Question

For forming a question. Put the verb as the first word of the sentence and appened suffix -ne to it.

For example: Scripsitne verba (Did he/she write words)?