The secret case of Latin nouns

The Locative Case

 Latin is full of secrets, and the case system is no different. Today, we're going to delve into the secret case of Latin. If you want to find out about the other cases of Latin nouns, you can find my overview and the longer run down of each case here in the bambasbat archive.

Cases in Latin

We usually talk about six cases of nouns:

• nominative

• vocative

• accusative

• genitive

• dative

• ablative

But, there is a secret case that you don't get told about

The locative case!

The locative case is a slightly unusual and not very common case in Latin. It's one of those holdovers from older Latin that disappeared over the years as the language developed.

However, it is still in existence in several older, but very important, words in Latin, so you do need to get your head around it at some point.

What is it for?

It's used to show position, with names of towns, cities, and small islands.

Now “small islands” is quite difficult to define, but a lot of modern historians have decided that it's specifically islands which are named after the only town or city on that island, meaning small enough to only really have one main settlement.

There are some exceptions, obviously, because it's Latin, but towns and cities is a good idea to start with.

So why is it so unknown?

Now you might be saying, “Hang on. Do we really need this case? Why have I never been taught about it before?”

Well there is a reason for the secrecy and that's because the ablative has gradually taken the place of the locative.

Ablative Takeover

The ablative case is used for nouns that are an instrument you do something with, or an agent (person) that something is done by, or a location.

You can translate it as “by”, “with”, “from”, or “in”. That has a locative sense. So most places are described using the Latin in + an ablative.

So why do we care about the Locative?

Despite the regrettable actions of the ablative, the locative does still hold sway in a few places. These are mostly places that are really important, which were used a lot by the Romans, and therefore retained the locative sense because it became normal.

Locative endings

1. In first declension, the singular is -ae. The plural is -is, just like a dative or an ablative plural.

2. For the second declension, it's -i and -is for the plural, which again is just like the dative and the ablative.

3. In the third declension, there is -e or -i as the ending, which is interchangeable depending on the noun, just to be more confusing. But then we have -ibus which is what we expect for the ablative ending anyway.

Now the good news is that you don't have to worry about 4th and 5th declension nouns because we only have the locative in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd declensions.

That might be a bit confusing when I show you some of the most common locative nouns. For each one I have given the nominative singular and translation, and then underneath I have the locative and translation.

Common locative nouns

• humus - ground

  humi - on the ground

• domus - home

  domi - at home

• bellum - war

  belli - at war

• animus - mind, spirit

  animi - in mind, in spirit

You will see that a couple of the above nouns are in the 4th declension, such as domus. However, domus uses a 2nd declension ending for its locative which actually makes things easier!

So why do I need also the first and third declension?

That's because of the city names and place names that we might need. They are often 1st or 3rd declension.

• Roma - Rome

  Romae - at Rome, in Rome

• Cathago - Carthage

  Carthagine - at Carthage, in Carthage

• Athenae - Athens

  Athenis - at Athens, in Athens

Now these are really common and you do need to know them, because you might have spotted them in a passage and thought, “oh heck, what do I do with these?” - but now you are fully clued in on the secret of Latin - they’re locatives!

And that's really all there is to the locative case

It's a sneaky little case that you usually don't get taught because it's very uncommon. However, it's a good one to know and impress people with! Or at least, that's what I like to think. Anyway…

Thanks for reading this post, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!