MM: Lesson - Latin I Review - Nouns

Latin I Review - Nouns

It is vital that the grammar from Latin I be used as a foundation for new learning in Latin II. Please carefully review each of the Parts of Speech. Verbs, nouns and adjectives are considered Major Parts of Speech, while adverbs, pronouns and prepositions are Minor Parts of Speech.

Before we jump into the review, what do you remember? Complete this brief self-assessment to see how much you remember about Latin nouns from Latin I!

Nouns

Please download the Latin I Noun Review Links to an external site. handout. This document contains notes about noun bases, formation and translation rules. It also contains information about the characteristics of nouns, including a discussion on the major cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and ablative).

A noun is traditionally defined as a person, place or thing. In Latin a noun is a word that uses a set of case endings and has three characteristics, which are case, number and gender.

Noun Basics - Dictionary Entry

When looking up a noun in a dictionary or vocabulary handout, nouns will be listed with the following information:

• Nominative form
• Genitive form
• Gender
• English meaning

Nota Bene

• The nominative and genitive forms will almost always be singular, but there are some nouns that only have plural forms.

The genitive form is included because it provides important formational information for the noun:

• The genitive ending indicates what declension (noun group) a noun belongs to.
• The genitive is used to obtain the noun base, on which the other noun endings are added.

Example noun dictionary entry:

• mors, mortis, f. - death
  • mors = nominative singular
  • mortis = genitive singular. The -is ending indicates this is a 3rd declension noun.
    • The base for this noun is: mort- (mortis - is)
  • f. = feminine. A noun's gender is abbreviated in the dictionary entry:
    • m = masculine
    • f = feminine
    • n = neuter