Why is the genitive & genus of every substantive indicat

Maximus · Post by **Maximus** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 8:45 pm

Salvete,

Beeing a beginner in latin, I have some questions:
In my latin book, all substantives are presented in this way: puella,-ae (f), vinum, -i (n) etc. Isn't it redundant to specify the genus and genitive? Isn't it obvious from the ending what the genus and the genitive of the word are? Since all the books I've seen so far indicate them, there surely must be some importance to this information.

thanks

Timothy · Post by **Timothy** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 8:55 pm

Maximus wrote:Salvete,

Beeing a beginner in latin, I have some questions:
In my latin book, all substantives are presented in this way: puella,-ae (f), vinum, -i (n) etc. Isn't it redundant to specify the genus and genitive? Isn't it obvious from the ending what the genus and the genitive of the word are? Since all the books I've seen so far indicate them, there surely must be some importance to this information.

thanks

The gender of nauta is…?

The genitive of puer is pueri.
The genitive of ager is…?

You must learn (not deduce) the gender and genitive of the word.

- tim

Episcopus · Post by **Episcopus** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 9:46 pm

Let me join in

and the genitive of pondus is? What's the gender?

Titus Marius Crispus · Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:26 am

And how about tempus?

You would think tempus must be 2nd declension masculine, wouldn't you? But only after seeing its genitive (temporis) would you know that it is actually 3rd declension.

Even then, how can you determine the gender? You can't, so the dictionary has to tell you.

benissimus · Post by **benissimus** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 1:47 am

To summarize what the others have said, certain endings are shared by more than one declension and seeing both the nominative and genitive will tell you which declension the word is from. In addition, the gender must be shown because every declension has nouns of 2-3 genders that are declined alike or nearly alike.

Episcopus · Post by **Episcopus** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:20 pm

I think that it took quite a while to prove this point.

cweb255 · Post by **cweb255** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 6:35 pm

poeta, -ae (m.)

Maximus · Post by **Maximus** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 10:11 pm

Thank you for your replies.
I erroneously thought that all words ending with -us were masculine and 2. declension and all words ending with -a were feminine and 1. declension etc., because all the words I encountered so far, followed this pattern. Too bad it isn't that way, as it would save much time.

regards

Amy · Post by **Amy** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 8:40 am

The weird verbs are coming! The weird verbs are coming!

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Why is the genitive & genus of every substantive indicat

Why is the genitive & genus of every substantive indicat

Re: Why is the genitive & genus of every substantive ind