Parts of Speech

Every word in a sentence, whether it be Latin or English, falls into one of the following categories:

• nouns - people, places, things, or ideas (e.g. mouse, virtue)

• verbs - actions or states of being (e.g. to want, to read)

• adjectives - modifications or descriptions of nouns or pronouns (e.g. happy, yellow, two)

• pronouns - stand-ins for nouns based on their attributes, so you don't say the same word a million times (e.g. he, yours, these)

• adverbs - modifications or descriptions of verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs (e.g. quickly, fast, sadly)

• prepositions - introductions to prepositional phrases which modify some other part of a sentence (e.g. in, on, under, with)

• conjunctions - words that conjunct clauses in a sentence (e.g. but, because, while)

• interjections - exclamations, usually outside of the rest of a sentence (e.g. hoorah!, oh no!)

Declension and Case

Each sentence, whether in Latin or English, has at least one noun or pronoun, and the role these nouns and pronouns play with regard to a verb, a prepositional phrase, or an 's construction is critical to understanding the sentence's meaning. 

Consider the following example. The  nouns and pronouns are bolded.
I gave my brother's friend gelato with a cherry atop.

These are the main roles nouns and pronouns can play in a sentence:

• subjects - the one doing a verb's action. Here, I  is the subject of the verb gave.

• objects of possession - the one that another word is attributed to. Here, brother is an object of possession for the noun friend, since friend is attributed to it.

• indirect object - the one the action of the verb was done to or for. Here, friend is the indirect object of the verb gave.

• direct object - the one the verb's action is done to. Here, gelato is the direct object of the verb gave.

• object of a preposition - the one a preposition is acted on. Here, cherry is the object of the preposition with.

In Latin, we give nouns and pronouns special endings depending on which of these categories they play in the sentence. These classes of endings are called cases, and they are as follows:

• nominative - subjects

• genitive - objects of possession

• dative - indirect objects

• accusative - direct objects

• ablative - objects of prepositions

Nouns and pronouns are assigned different endings for each case depending on which declension group the word falls in (like how Spanish and French verbs conjugate different depending on whether they're -er or -ir verbs). 

There are five declension groups, but most words fall in the first three. If you are interested in in seeing the full chart, click here. For now, we've just looked at the nominative and accusative singular forms, and their general trends across declensions at that. Nominative singular forms vary in ending, but many end in -a (1st dec.) or -us (2nd dec.) The accusative singular, however, almost always ends in the letter -m.

See the videos at right for a more intricate explanation of the above. If you would like examples, please see the example words on this chart and focus on the forms we are learning this week.

Word Order

The core of any sentence is its subject and main verb, so finding the two in a Latin sentence is often the best place to start when translating into English. As you know, subjects in Latin take the nominative case and verbs (third-person singular present active verbs anyway, the only type we know about) end in the letter t. Once you have those spotted, you just need to find out what part of speech and part of the sentence the rest of the words are. Once you have that, all you need to do is rearrange the words into a way that makes sense in English. Let's look at some examples.

Caecilius est in horto.

What's the subject? The only word in the nominative case is Caecilius.
What's the verb? The only verb in the sentence is est, meaning is.
What else is there? in horto. What does it mean? In the garden.
So what's our translation? Caecilius is in the garden.

amicus iratus cibum consumit.

What's the subject? amicus, meaning the friend, and iratus, meaning angry are both in the nominative case. iratus agrees with amicus in case (and gender), so it must modify amicus. Thus, the subject is the angry friend.
What's the verb? The only verb in the sentence is consumit, meaning eats.
What else is there? cibum. What does it mean? the food. In what case? Accusative. So it is what? Direct object.
So what's our translation? The angry friend eats the food.

This may seem very simple right now, but eventually we're going to start seeing longer Latin sentences and understanding the fundamental parts is going to be very critical!