Latin Noob... Self - Study question on declension of gloria

[chiefie]

So, I am on day 2 of my self-study of latin and I am only on the first declension of nouns.

The book speaks of no irregulars for this declension, and if I follow it, gloria breaks down as follows:

Singular Plural
nom gloria gloriae
gen gloriae gloriarum
dat gloriae gloriis
acc gloriam glorias
abj gloria gloriis

Now, to me, the Plural dat and abj look incorrect. If they are correct, how would one pronounce that? Thanks for any help

[benissimus]

You declined it correctly. Remember that in Latin every letter is pronounced. In gloriis, the first 'I' is short and the second is long, so pronounce it something like glow-re-ees.

I don't know if I would say there are no irregulars for first declension, but that depends on your definition of "irregular".

[chiefie]

Thank you.. whew.. now I have learned 5 verbs.. I am really getting somewhere

So, since Latin declines its nouns, it would seem word order is not really important. When is it important ? I assume with adverbs and adjectives, but when else?

Also, how many verb tenses are there in Latin? Do most verb conjugate nicely? ('weakly' as they say in German) or is that another mess to learn?

Thanks again for the help.

[Amaranta]

You're right--word order isn't as important in Latin as in English, because the case (subject, object, etc) is expressed through declension. There's still a basic word order: Subject, modifiers of subject, indirect object, direct object, adverb, verb. However, that can change depending on if you want to give emphasis to a certain word. The first word in the sentence has the most emphasis, then the last, and the middle is the least important. You'll get to that eventually.

Can't answer your question on verbs, since I'm a new self-learner also and only a bit farther than you... Good luck with it!

[Amy]

There are six basic tenses:
Present "John eats/is eating/does eat Chinese food"
Imperfect "John was eating/used to eat Chinese food"
Future "John will eat/is going to eat Chinese food"
Perfect "John ate/has eaten Chinese food"
Pluperfect "John had eaten Chinese food"
Future perfect "John will have eaten Chinese food"
Those are all active but can be put into passive - "Chinese food will have been eaten by John", etc.
The last three are super easy to form, but the first three require a bit of memorization. (which vowel goes where! which ending to use!) There are four conjugations into which most verbs fall - you conjugate the verbs from 1st conjugation one way and 2nd conjugation another, etc.
I imagine verbs as little children while learning them. If they're not messy and always nicely behaved, how interesting could it be? So grin, bite your lower lip, and make some flashcards

And then there's the subjunctive! Used for things like "Let's go" or "I wish he'd come", etc. I don't know that yet, so I can't speak about its difficulty.


In first declension, watch out for filia, -ae, f. (daughter) Its declension is
filia filiae
filiae filiarum
filiae filiabus
filiam filias
filia filiabus
Because the second declension word filius, -i, m. would have the same dative and ablative plural endings if filia were regular. -abus makes a distinction.
That is the only one I can think of though, besides words for occupations (poetae, nautae) being masculine
Good luck self-studying! Beginning is the hardest part.

[Michaelyus]

And of course, the Latin counterpart of sein is completely irregular.

[chiefie]

Not to degenerate into a linguistic session here, but I wonder why the verb "to be" is irregular in every language I have learned (English, Spanish, French, German, and now Latin)

Is it because it would be one of the oldest verbs in any language? Or is it because it is irregular in so many languages? But I digress...

Does anyone know a language where 'to be' is [i] not [/i] irregular?

[Episcopus]

Chinese

shi4

[benissimus]

It is irregular in all Indo-European languages because the parent language itself (Indo-European) had an irregular paradigm for it. Obviously, if it is irregular in Latin then that also explains why it would be irregular in the Romance language that developed from it.

In both Latin and English, the Indo-European verbs for "exist (be)" and "grow" collided, along with other words to form the English and Latin words for "be". In English, "be", and in Latin, "fui, fut-" comes from the IE word for "grow".

[Michaelyus]

Esperanto: esti

[Iacobus Mathematicus]

Not to degenerate into a linguistic session here, but I wonder why the verb "to be" is irregular in every language I have learned (English, Spanish, French, German, and now Latin)

One theory is that words which are most commonly used are also most resistent to simplification, regularization, or the like. Less commonly used words will lose irregular forms as a language spreads, since the speakers (unfamiliar with the strange forms) will be more likely to systemitize the verb for their own sanity. Accordingly, the words that are used most often are the most likely to be irregular.

If you look at Latin, this seems to be fairly true; ie, words which we can imagine regularly using in common speech are irregular (think esse, posse, volle, malle, facere, vis, duo, tres, fio, ire, etc.).

Practically speaking, this means we will have the hardest time learning the things we need to know the most.

pax!

[Turpissimus]

Don't forget that dea (goddess) also declines like filia (i.e. with deabus etc.). The reason, obviously, is that you don't want the ablative and dative of filia and dea confused with the abl. and dat. of filius and deus.