The Power of Nouns: 1st Declension
Easy Latin: Part 5
salve! Hello!
Welcome to Easy Latin Part 5! In this post I’m going to look at making sentences interesting using different types of nouns.
Last time we looked at verbs. If you missed it, you can find it here. Here’s a quick recap of what we covered:
sedeo, “I sit”
sedes, “you sit”
sedet, “he / she sits”
So just changing the verb ending alters who is doing the verb (the subject performing the action).
video, vides, videt (I see, you see, he/she/it sees)
numero, numeras, numerat (I count, you count, he/she/it counts)
I talked about how the first person is “I”, the second person is “you”, and the third person is “he or she”. We looked at numerare and ambulare (1st conjugation) having a different ending than sedere and timere (2nd conjugation), and that's just to do with the vowels in the verbs.
Introducing Nouns
Today, we’ll shift our focus to nouns. Let's start with a simple sentence:
femina videt
“The woman sees”
In Latin, there’s no direct translation for "the" or "a", so we supply it in our translation. Hence, femina translates to "the woman".
Now, let’s add more details to our sentence:
femina puellam videt
“The woman sees the girl”
Notice how adding more information enriches the sentence? Again, since Latin doesn’t have a word for "the", we include it for clarity in English translations. Saying "woman sees girl" wouldn’t make much sense in English!
Understanding Subjects and Objects
Here’s a new sentence:
puella feminam videt
“The girl sees the woman”
This sentence looks similar to the one above, but with a notable difference—the subject and object have swapped places. This time, the girl is the one seeing the woman, rather than the other way around.
In the sentence above, puella (girl) is the subject and feminam (woman) is the object. The "m" at the end of feminam indicates that she is not in charge. Therefore, puella is the subject, and the sentence reads, "The girl sees the woman."
femina nautam videt.
What do you think this sentence means? Here are your options:
The sailor sees the woman
The woman sees the sailor
Look carefully at the ending of the nouns to tell who is in charge of the sentence.
… [answer below] …
It means “the woman sees the sailor”. The -m on the end of nautam tells us that the sailor is not in charge of the verb. So I have to use femina as the subject of the verb instead. “The woman sees the sailor”.
The Importance of Word Endings
nauta puellam videt.
“The sailor sees the girl”
The -m on the end of puellam tells me she is not in charge.
nautam femina videt.
What does this sentence mean? Be careful here.
The -m on the end of nautam tells me that the sailor is not in charge of the sentence. This sentence means “the woman sees the sailor”.
Flexibility of Latin Word Order
Latin word order is flexible, which means that sentences can be rearranged without altering the meaning. For example:
nautam femina videt is identical in meaning to femina nautam videt.
Regardless of the word order, “the woman” remains the doer of the action - the subject (or nominative) of the sentence. nautam can’t be in charge, so must be the object of the sentence (the accusative).
Further practise
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Thanks so much for joining me. See you next time on bambasbat.
vale!