Declining words

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Joementum
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Declining words

Post by Joementum »

I am sorry for all the questions, but I am in the process of learning on my own, so it seems everyone here is my only source for more information than books.

So the question is: Is there a way to view a word and see what declension it is, or must you look it up? If so an example would be great if only for one of the declensions, but the rule for all of them if they exist.

Thanks

Joe

chrisb
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Post by chrisb »

Most vocabularies and dictionaries will give the gender, the nom. sg. and the gen. sg. of a noun which is enough to tell you its declension.

Thus filia -ae f. is 1st declension

dominus -i m. is 2nd declension

and so on. Watch out, though, there are different patterns to the 2nd declension (puer -i m. , regnum -i n. etc.)

You need to learn the gender and the gen. sg. with the noun and its meaning. Care at the beginning saves time in the end.

chrisb

Joementum
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Post by Joementum »

This is helpful but I am looking for a more informative explaintion if it is possible on determining the word without looking it up. Also would you be able to explain the third and fourth declension as well.

Joe[/quote]

Joementum
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Joined: Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:30 pm
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Post by Joementum »

Also does anyone know of a good place online or a book to pick up that will have an instruction on learning latin...

ingrid70
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Post by ingrid70 »

From some nominative endings you can tell which declension a word belongs to, but not many, because:

The tell tale -a of the 1st decl. (e.g. mensa, mensae) could also be 3rd decl. n. (e.g. poema, poematis)
-us of the 2nd decl. (e.g. dominus, domini) could be 3rd f. (virtus, virtutis), 3rd n. (decus, decoris) or 4rd m. (fructus, fructus)
-er of the 2nd decl. m. (e.g. puer, pueri; ager, agri) could also be 3rd. m. (verber, verberis) or 3rd n. (ver, veris).
-es of the 5th decl. (e.g res, rei) can also be 3rd. f. (nubes, nubis)

So the only nouns that are predictable from their nominative ending are those in -um (2nd n.), -u (4rd n., only a few words) and those not ending in any of the above (3rd decl.). (erm, I did completely disregard Greek endings here, mostly seen in names, e.g. Niobe in -e, which is 1st f.)


As to online books: look at the Learn Latin section here at textkit. Several people are working through D'Ooge or Collar and Daniell; the D'Ooge book has a (unfinished) key on the site, and it's own forum for asking questions.

Hope this helps.
Ingrid

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