Dumb question...

[boarderpatrol04]

Probally more a English question that a Latin question but please bear with me since I havent had an English class in years and I'm trying to teach Latin by myself...(well most of it, with help from this site) and "case" is that another word for noun? or the whole group such as noun, verb, adjective, etc? or is it types of nouns, adj. , verbs, etc? or am i thinking too much into this?

[JLatin1]

Probally more a English question that a Latin question but please bear with me since I havent had an English class in years and I'm trying to teach Latin by myself...(well most of it, with help from this site) and "case" is that another word for noun? or the whole group such as noun, verb, adjective, etc? or is it types of nouns, adj. , verbs, etc? or am i thinking too much into this?

Case is a word meaning type of noun of inflection. For example cake in the Genitive (possessive) case in English is cake's. Most cases are indicated in English by the position of a word or phrase in the sentence. In Latin, the is ending that is determined by the case and declension of a word.

Here is the technical definition from the MSn Dictionary:
"grammatical form of word: a form of a noun, pronoun, or adjective that indicates its syntactical relation to surrounding words."

Well, I tried to explain it. You can PM me, if you have any further questions.

[benissimus]

The Latin cases are nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative. Each case has its own ending, a case ending. Case is basically just the name for the form that a noun, adjective, or pronoun is in. For example, nauta is the nominative (singular) case of nauta, nautae is the genitive (singular) case, nautas is the accusative (plural) case. The process of changing forms according to case is called declension, but declension also refers to a specific set of case endings.

English is usually not referred to as having noun cases, though technically the possessive 's is a vestigial genitive case. English pronouns do have a subjective, objective (oblique), and possessive case (possessive case is usually just thought of as an adjective though). subject cases would be "I", "thou", "he/she/it", "we", "you", "they", and "who"; objective cases would be "me", "thee", "him/her/it", "us", "you", "them", and "whom"; possessive cases would be "my/mine", "thy/thine", "his/her(s)/its", "our(s)", "your(s)", "their(s)", and "whose".

[boarderpatrol04]

alright...kinda what i was thinking but just wanted to make sure and have it confirmed...best not to start off on the wrong foot....thanks a lot!