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Noun Declensions. 1st: mostly feminine, with a few masculine. ancilla, poēta, aqua 2 nd : masculine (- us ) or neuter (- um ) dominus, servus, templum, ātrium
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Noun Declensions • 1st: mostly feminine, with a few masculine. • ancilla, poēta, aqua • 2nd: masculine (-us) or neuter (-um) • dominus, servus, templum, ātrium • 3rd: all genders; usually with one stem in the nominative (with neuters, nominative and accusative) and another for the other cases • leō, leōnis; mīles, mīlitis; custōs, custōdis • 4th: masculine (-us) and neuter (-ū) • gradus, portus, cornu • 5th: feminine, except for diēs, which can be masculine or feminine
Dictionary Entries • The dictionary will give you the nominative singular, genitive singular and gender of a noun. To save space, the genitive singular can be abbreviated: • ancilla, ancillae f. OR ancilla, -ae f. • dominus, dominī m. OR dominus, dominī m. • mīles, mīlitis m. OR mīles, -itis m. • The genitive singular lets you know how the stem changes in a 3rd declension noun and also tells you if a noun in –us is 2nd or 4th declension • servus, -ī m. v. portus, -ūs m. • The vocabulary at the back of Cambridge Book 1 gives you the accusative singular instead because the genitive is not introduced until Book 2.
General Tips • The accusative singular in masculine and feminine nouns always ends in –m • dominum, ancillam, mercātōrem • The accusative plural of masculine and feminine nouns always ends in -s • dominōs, ancillās, montēs • The genitive plural always ends in -um • dominōrum, ancillārum, montium • The dative and ablative plural are always the same and end in –īs or –bus • cum ancillīs, cum dominīs, sine mīlitibus, omnibus crēdite • The neuter nominative and accusative are always the same • forum est pulchrum, forum spectāmus • The neuter nominative/accusative plural always ends in –a • computātra nōn sunt animālia (so a word ending in –a isn’t always a singular, 1st declension noun)
3rd declension: SeXy nouns • 3rd declension adjectives ending in –s or–x with the same number of syllables in nominative and genitive singular (e.g cīvis, cīvis,citizen; ignis, ignis, fire) or with a one-syllable nominative singular and a stem for the genitive ending in two consonants (urbs, urbis or nox, noctis) have the genitive plural in –ium: e,g, civium, urbium • These nouns also have an alternative accusative plural ending in –īs (e.g. cīvīs videō or cīvēs videō, I see the citizens). This ending, rarely used in beginners’ books, is quite common in Latin literature. • If the nominative and genitive singular are exactly the same, the ablative singular can end in –ī as well as in –e (e.g. cum cīvī or cum cīve (with a citizen), sine ignī or sine igne (without fire))
3rd declension: neuter nouns with –ia plural • Neuter nouns ending in –e, -al or –ar (e.g. mare, maris, sea; animal, animālis, animal) also have genitive plural nominative in –ium • They have nominative and accusative plural in –ia • Their ablative singular ALWAYS ends in -ī
