The Most Interesting Case: Announcing the Ablative!
January Latin Challenge: Day 8 of 31
Welcome back to bambasbat for Day 8 of the January Latin Challenge! Before we start, I want to give you this free one page cheat sheet for all the noun endings. It will really help you to get familiar with all the cases for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declensions. Go and download it, and have it to hand while you read through this post.
The ablative case! It sounds odd, but it is one of the most useful cases in Latin. It has so many different uses, and that can stress people out. However, it means that its really important, and once you get the hang of it you have vastly improved your ability to translate Latin!
So what is the ablative case?
Well, it can mean many things. For now, use these few meanings to help you out.
by
with
from
in
Here are some common uses of the ablative you may come across:
Use One:
It can be an instrumental ablative - as in this example: She killed the king with a sword. The sword is the instrument with which she killed the king. We can think of it as by means of a sword, or just using the easier with.
Use Two:
It can be easy to spot if the sentence includes the word with, this one is called an ablative of accompaniment. The master walked with the woman.
Use Three:
The ablative case can also show some form of location, in either time or place. By that I mean you use it to say you are away from something or someone. He walked away from the town. In this sentence, the word “town” is in the ablative.
Use Four:
Nouns meaning in somewhere will usually also have the Latin word in preceding it, such as in this sentence - in the street would be in via in Latin.
These are just a few of the uses you may find. Keep the mantra in your head of “by, from, with, in” to help you choose the best option.
Here is the table of ablative endings you will need to become familiar with.
Remember, there is also the 4th and 5th declension, but I will cover them in other posts. And don’t forget to download the free nouns cheat sheet from here. It will really help you along the way!
Prepositions
The helpful thing about the ablative is that it often comes after a preposition to help you notice it. A preposition is a word that shows something about direction, time, space, or location. Here are some of the common prepositions that can be followed by an ablative:
a / ab - away from
cum - with
de - from
e / ex - from / out of
in - in / on
sine - without
Some examples
domini cum feminis ambulant.
In this sentence, feminis matches my ablative ending for the 1st declension plural, so this could mean by, with, from or in the women. The preposition cum tells me it will be “with”. domini is plural nominative, the masters are in charge of this sentence. The verb ambulant means “they walk”. All together, start with the nominative, then do the verb, and finally add anything else. This sentence means the masters walk with the women.
domina maritum veneno necat.
In this example, domina is my nominative, but this time it is first declension, so it must be “the mistress” rather than the masters we had in the previous sentence. She is in charge. Then always find the verb - necat means “kills” or “murders”. Now we find an accusative - maritum. The -m ending tells me the husband is the object of the verb. And finally I have veneno - this matches my singular ablative ending for the 2nd declension neuter (venenum is a neuter noun). This is an ablative of instrument, as this is what she used to kill him, so we could say the mistress kills her husband by means of poison, or more naturally, with poison
Coming up tomorrow:
This was a brief introduction to the ablative case in Latin. It is one of the most useful noun cases to learn as it has so many meanings and uses, so do spend some time going over it to lock it in.
Thank you for reading this post, I hope it was useful! Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or problems, and I will see you tomorrow for Day 9 of the January Latin Challenge on bambasbat!