Making The Case For Latin Cases
January Latin Challenge: Day 3 of 31
Today we will be looking at the basics of the Latin Case system.
Before we start, go and grab my free guide to Noun Endings here. Have it to hand while we go through this lesson. It is a really simple and clear one page document which you can have right there next to you to help guide you through these cases as we look at them, and you can get it emailed straight to you.
Easy Latin Cases
Today, I am going to show you some easy ways to translate the 5 Latin cases, as well as a hidden 6th case you might not know! If you want more explanation about how the cases work, and how to recognise them, check out my other posts coming up this week (January Latin Challenge: Days 4-8) where I go into each of the cases in more detail!
Lots of people come up against the same problem in Latin.
They don’t understand “how to order” their translation. This is often because word order doesn’t matter in Latin - you can jumble all the words around and the sentence will still mean the same thing. Let me show you - here are 3 versions of the same sentence:
dominus puellae epistulas servorum dedit.
epistulas servorum puellae dominus dedit.
servorum puellae dominus epistulas dedit.
They all mean exactly the same thing, “the master gave the slave’s letters to the girl”.
This is one of the reasons that the endings of words are so important in Latin. The endings change depending on the word’s function in the sentence. As you can see, each noun has different endings, and these tell me where to put them in my translation.
So to start off - there are the 5 cases you must know in Latin. I am focusing on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd declensions in this post and in my guide. If you want to see examples of 4th and 5th, subscribe so you don’t miss those lessons!
The nominative is the noun which is the subject of the sentence. This is the one in charge of the verb. The singular nominatives are what you will find in dictionaries.
The accusative is the noun which “receives the action”. This noun cannot be in charge of the action, so make sure you don’t put “puellam” as the subject in your translation!
The genitive case shows possession. In my example, it was the “slave’s” letters, or the letters “of the slave”. The slave is in the genitive case, so I know the letters belong to him. The genitive ending is often found in the dictionary next to the nominative - this is because it shows whether the stem of the word changes at all.
The dative is the “indirect object”. They are not the subject, but they are also not the direct object of the sentence (that is the accusative). Always keep to or for in your mind for this one - this is the best translation for a dative case. Some verbs actually “take the dative”, which means you should expect a dative case after you see it. If you want some extra examples, make sure you read my post for January Latin Challenge: Day 7!
The ablative is a super useful case, which can have many meanings - here are the main ones to keep in mind: by, with and from. It can have a preposition, like cum (which means with) or it can be on it’s own, so you need to be able to recognise these.
The Hidden Case
Now one case everyone forgets - the vocative case! This is the one you need for talking directly to someone. This is often easy to spot, as it is usually in speech marks, but it can also be found in speeches or legal cases. Cicero uses it a lot when directly addressing the judges in his court cases. Luckily, it is the same as the nominative case for the 1st and 3rd declension, so the 2nd declension is the one to look at.
If we put all those things together, we come up with the table in my free guide. Do go and download it here. It is really important you are familiar with these, as they are by far the most common endings for nouns in Latin.
As I said before, there are also the 4th and 5th declension nouns, but they aren’t as common. I will be explaining these in a future post, so make sure to subscribe here to get updates.
Let’s have a look at recognising some cases. Here are 4 sentences. For each noun see if you can figure out the case. There is a vocabulary list underneath which gives you the nominative singular endings for each noun - this will help you to find the right column on the endings table to look down. Then it is just a question of matching the endings, and picking the one that makes most sense if there is more than one option.
servus puellas salutat.
mercatores dominis epistulas dant.
“salve, puella!”
bellum saevum est. hostes feminas cum gladiis necant.
I am going to go through the answers below, so don’t scroll until you are ready to read on!
servus is nominative singular, it has the -us ending of the 2nd declension. The slave is in charge of this sentence. puellas is 1st declension, accusative plural - they are the object of the sentence. So this sentence means the slave greets the girls.
mercatores is nominative plural. It could also be accusative, or vocative! However, no one is being directly addressed, and the verb is plural, so it is more likely to be the nominative. dominis is 2nd declension, and could be dative or ablative. Because I know the verb means “gives”, I can assume “to” or “for” is a better option, so it is dative plural. epistulas is 1st declension accusative plural - the object of the sentence. So the sentence means the merchants give letters to the masters.
puella here is the 1st declension. It could be nominative, vocative, or ablative. Here it is in speech marks, and someone is saying “hello” - so we can assume this is the vocative singular - the girl is being addressed. This means hello, girl!
Two sentences in this one! bellum is 2nd declension neuter, and could be nominative, vocative, or accusative. saevum is an adjective that describes this noun, and the verb is singular, so I can assume that bellum is the nominative singular - there is nothing else in this sentence, and est doesn’t take an object! The second sentence has hostes as the nominative plural - again I am using the plural verb to tell me that my nominative must be a plural, and this one is the only option that can be. feminas has to be the accusative plural, so the women are the object of the sentence, and gladiis is the dative or ablative plural. Since cum means “with”, I know gladiis is the ablative case, as that is one of the translations I can use for an ablative. This sentence means The war is savage. The enemies kill women with swords.
So there you have it! I hope this was a helpful overview of Latin cases. For a more detailed delve into each case, keep checking your inbox for the next January Latin Challenge posts, or head to my page to check them out!
If you have any questions, leave a comment. Thanks for joining me, and see you tomorrow for day 4 of the January Latin Challenge!